Ibi 


PETER  PAUL    I 
BOOK  CO.,     I 

BUFFALO,  N.  Y.  | 


-^<S   X 


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ESTHETIC   PEINCIPLES 


«* 


M^ 


iESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES 


BY 


HENEY  EUTGEKS  MAESHALL,  M.A. 

AUTHOR  or  "fain,  PLEASURE,  AND  JE8THBTICS  " 


MACMILLAN    AND    CO. 

AND    LONDON 

1895 
All  rights  reserved 


COPTBIQHT,  1895, 

Bt  MACMILLAiq^  AND  CO. 


NoriDooli  ^KBs: 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


Pj  LI  UNiyEKSTTY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

*  ^  SANTA -BARBAILA.CgLLEGE  LIBRARY 

^oi  WS44 

K3  ' 


PREFACE. 

One  of  the  kindly  critics  of  my  book 
on  Pain,  Pleasure,  and  Esthetics  has  com- 
pared the  task  of  its  reading  with  the  effort 
required  in  walking  over  a  ploughed  field  after 
a  heavy  rain;  although  in  the  end,  I  am 
glad  to  say,  he  finds  the  labour  healthful,  and 
looks  back  upon  the  effort  with  pleasure.  I 
have  thought  it  worth  while  to  try  to  show 
to  such  readers  a  way  across  this  ploughed 
field  which  will  not  involve  so  much  arduous 
labour  on  their  part;  and  I  think  this  pos- 
sible because  the  explorer  of  a  field  is  often 
able  to  guide  others  with  ease  in  a  path 
already  trodden  and  therefore  familiar,  being 
able  in  places  to  take  a  straighter  course 
than  that  at  first  necessary,  because  it  is  no 
longer  needful  to  search  for  the  path. 


VI  PREFACE. 

In  this  small  volume  I  do  not  attempt  to 
cover  the  whole  subject  discussed  in  my 
former  work  above  referred  to ;  but  I  do 
attempt  to  sketch  out  the  results  which  are 
of  greatest  interest  and  of  most  practical 
value  in  reference  to  the  study  of  Esthetics. 

If  this  book  meet  the  eye  of  some  scientific 
psychologist,  I  must  beg  him  to  remember 
that  it  is  written  for  less  critical  readers,  and 
that  I  have  at  times,  in  the  interests  of  clear- 
ness, abandoned  the  strictest  accuracy  in  ver- 
bal expression  where  this  accuracy  would  have 
involved  too  technical  a  phraseology.  I  must 
beg  him  to  judge  me  rather  by  my  larger 
work. 

The  reader  who  is  not  a  psychologist  may 
find  the  second  chapter  tedious ;  if  so,  it  may 
be  passed  over  without  loss  of  the  drift  of 
the  argument  so  far  as  it  relates  to  aesthetic 
problems;  still,  I  hope  he  will  not  pass  it 
over  without  a  trial. 

This  book,  already  under  consideration, 
was  hastened  to  completion  in  consequence 


PREFACE.  Vll 

of  the  kind  request  by  the  Trustees  of  Cohim- 
bia  College,  New  York,  that  I  deliver  a  course 
of  lectures  upon  the  subject  of  ^Esthetics 
imder  their  auspices.  The  reader  who  hap- 
pens to  have  been  present  at  those  lectures, 
delivered  during  November  and  December, 
1894,  will  notice  that  the  substance  of  them 
is  contained  in  the  pages  that  follow,  al- 
though the  topics  are  here  somewhat  differ- 
ently arranged  and  are  more  fully  treated. 

New  Yobk,  February,  1895. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

The  Observer's  Standpoint.    1 1 

The  Field  of  ^Esthetics. 

CHAPTEE  II. 

The  Observer's  Standpoint.    II 33 

Pleasure  and  Pain. 

CHAPTEE  in. 

The  Artist's  Standpoint 52 

The  Art  Instinct. 

CHAPTEE   IV. 

The  Critic's  Standpoint 84 

.Esthetic  Standards. 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  V. 

FAOZ 

AliGBDONIC  iEsTHETICS.      1 112 

Negative  Principles. 

CHAPTER  VL 

Algedonic  ^Esthetics.    II 156 

Positive  Principles. 

Index 199 


ESTHETIC  PRINCIPLES. 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.      I. 

-      The  Field  of  ^Esthetics. 

The  word  "  Esthetics  "  is  one  whicli  is  to 
be  used,  in  what  follows,  with  a  very  broad 
signification,  to  refer  to  the  whole  realm  of 
Beauty.  Judged  etymologically,  the  word 
might  seem  properly  to  have  a  somewhat 
narrower  meaning  than  that  which  we  thus 
give  to  it,  for  it  was  derived  by  Baumgarten 
from  the  Greek  aia-OrjTiKo?,  meaning  appre- 
hended hy  the  senses  ;  and  it  was  used  by  him 
to  describe  the  Beautiful  as  a  whole,  only 
because  he  thought  the  Beautiful  could  be 
explained  in  some  manner  as  arising  from 

B  1 


Z  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

the  obscure  perception  of  sense  impressions 
or  of  the  relations  between  them.  Although 
his  narrow  view  must  be  discarded,  the  word 
has  become  so  firmly  fixed  with  the  broader 
meaning  that  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should 
not  be  used,  as  it  is  employed  very  generally 
to-day,  and  as  we  shall  here  use  it,  to  indi- 
cate the  whole  field  of  Beauty. 

Esthetics,  then,  is  the  science  of  the 
Beautiful;  and  during  the  whole  of  this 
study  we  must  not  allow  ourselves  to  forget 
this  broad  meaning  attached  to  the  word. 
It  is  meant  to  cover  not  only  Beauty  proper, 
but  also  the  Sublime  and  the  Ludicrous, 
which  are  states  sometimes  separated  en- 
tirely from  Beauty,  although  generally  ac- 
knowledged to  be  closely  allied  to  it.  As 
the  mental  effects  of  the  Sublime  and  Ludi- 
crous are  more  evanescent  than  those  pro- 
duced by  what  we  call  the  Beautiful,  we  shall 
naturally  find  ourselves  discussing  almost  en- 
tirely the  problems  of  Beauty  proper. 

-/Esthetics,  too,  must  take  account  of  the 


THE    OBSERVERS   STANDPOINT.  6 

Beautiful  in  nature  as  well  as  in  the  works 
of  man ;  for  the  thrill  with  which  each  affects 
us  is  the  same.  This  is  recognized  unwit- 
tingly in  the  habitual  emphasis  of  the  imita- 
tion of  nature  in  the  practical  work  of  the 
artists  and  in  the  teaching  of  many  philo- 
sophical writers  from  Aristotle's  ^  time  to  this 
day.  But  there  is  a  tendency,  of  late  espe- 
cially, to  speak  of  art  and  of  its  beauties 
apart  from  the  beauties  in  nature,  a  mode 
of  thought  too  likely  to  carry  one  into  dis- 
cussions about  special  skill,  or  to  limit  ones 
view  by  an  emphasis  of  some  special  art 
which  is  held  to  be  higher  than  another. 
The  hierarchy  of  the  arts  is  a  matter  to  be 
determined  finally  by  metaphysical  condi- 
tions, and  one  with  which  we  need  not  con- 
cern ourselves  here.  For  us,  in  this  our 
most  general  view,  separation  of  the  arts  is 
altogether  out  of  place ;  all  of  them  must  be 

1  M.  Bosanquet  thinks  this  emphasis  of  Imitation  is  not 
properly  attributed  to  Aristotle,  as  is  done  by  many  of  hia 
commentators. 


4  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

gathered  together  without  exclusion  of  any 
one,  and  their  effects  must  be  considered  in 
conjunction  with  the  effects  produced  by 
nature  in  bringing  to  us  the  impression  of 
Beauty. 

The  reader  then  will  find  me  using  the 
words  "Esthetics"  and  "Beauty'^  and  "  Art" 
and  "Artist"  in  the  widest  possible  way.  Even 
if  we  ourselves  get  no  aesthetic  delight  from  a 
given  impression,  we  must  take  it  for  granted 
that  the  impression  is  aesthetic  for  others,  if 
they  tell  us  that  the  object  considered  is 
beautiful  for  them,  either  by  speech  or  in 
other  mode  than  speech,  viz.,  by  their  action 
in  relation  to  it.  The  word  "Art"  is  com- 
monly used  to  cover  the  whole  realm  of  aes- 
thetic endeavour,  and  I  know  of  no  other  word 
as  good  as  "Artist,"  that  can  be  used  to  indi- 
cate the  aesthetic  worker  in  each  and  all  of 
the  varied  fields  in  which  beauty  is  of  mo- 
ment. I  shall  use  the  word  thus  although  it 
is  often  employed  to  refer  to  painters  and 
draughtsmen  only. 


THE   OBSERVERS   STANDPOINT.  O 

So  much  for  our  broad  use  of  terms.  Now 
let  us  take  a  different  standpoint ;  let  us  con- 
sider a  distinction  which  seems  to  me  to  be 
of  importance. 

—  There  are  two  ways  in  which  we  may 
look  upon  aesthetic  problems ;  -  we  may  con- 
sider, first,  the  nature  of  the  imjyression  made 
upon  the  observer,  and,  second,  the  nature 
of  the  instinct  that  leads  to  the  production 
of  the  art-work. 

In  my  study  of  what  has  beefr-done-4ar- 
the  past  by  thoughtful  men  -in  this  depart- 
ment, I  find,  very  frequently,  obscurities  of 
one  kind  or  another  which  seem  to  me  to 
be  caused  by  the  failure  to  distinguish  be- 
tween these  two  ways  of  looking  at  the  sub- 
ject that  we  -have  before  us. 

Wc  have,  then,  two  different  standpoints: 
first,  the  "Observer's  Standpoint,"  relating 
to  the  field  of  Inipression,  and,  second,  the 
"Artist's  Standpoint,"  which  deals  with  the 
Art  Instinct.  In  one  sense  the  "  Observer's 
Standpoint"   is  of  wider  interest  than  the 


6  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

*^  Artist's  Standpoint//,  because  the  former 
-brings  -  us  into  direct  communion  with  na- 
ture, which  we  have  seen  furnishes  us  so 
important  ^  part  of  our  aesthetic  field4 
whilst  the  latter,  the  view  which  em- 
phasizes the  impulse  to  creative  work  in 
art,  is  bound  to  nature  less  directly,  but  on 
the  other  hand  gains  in  width  and  impor- 
tance in  that  it  cannot  be  cut  away  alto- 
gether from  the  "  Observer's  Standpoint "  ; 
for  the  artist  must  alternately  follow  his 
creative  instinct  and  become  the  observer  and 
critic  of  his  own  work. 

In  this  chapter  we  -shall  take  ihe  stand= 
point  of  the  observer;  -we  shalL  consider 
Beauty  as  impressing  itself  upon  us,  and 
-we  shall  ask  what  are  the  characteristics 
which  produce  this  effective  impression. 

As  soon  as  man  learns  to  feel  the  value  of 
beauty  in  nature  and  in  art,  he  is  most  nat- 
urally led  to  consider  the  aesthetic  failure  of 
the  great  mass  of  objects  that  surround  him. 


THE   OBSERVERS    STANDPOINT.  7 

As  naturally  does  he  long  to  find  some  means 
by  which  he  may  infuse  this  loved  beauty 
into  his  surroundings;  some  principle  by  the 
application  of  which  he  may  destroy  ugliness ; 
for  how  gloeious,  how  noble,  it  would  be,  will 
he  say,  could  all  things  that  impress  us  be 
beautiful  whichever  way  we  turn ! 

So  it  happens  that  we  find  thinkers  from 
the  earliest  times  making  research  for  the 
principles  of  beauty.  Few  persons,  indeed, 
who  have  not  undertaken  the  serious  study 
of  Esthetics  from  a  historical  standpoint 
have  any  notion  of  the  enormous  amount 
of  human  thought  of  the  higher  type  that 
has  been  given  to  this  subject.  And 
surely  we  may  look  forward  with  keen- 
est anticipation  to  a  renewal  of  the  quest. 
For  if  the  pathway  of  our  predecessors  be 
filled  with  signs  of  failure,  surely  the  end 
to  which  we  strive  is  shown  to  be  worthy 
of  our  labour  by  the  large  number  of  impor- 
tant thinkers  who  have  turned  their  atten- 
tion to  strictly  aesthetic  problems. 


8  -AESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

It  is  most  natural  for  man,  when  attention 
is  first  given  to  such  a  problem  as  the  one  we 
are  to  consider,  to  turn  to  the  objects  which 
are  impressing  him,  and  to  seek  for  some 
special  characteristic  in  the  objects  them- 
selves, some  objective  quality,  which  shall 
account  for  the  special  impression  gained. 

To  explain  what  I  mean,  let  i*e;  suppose 
that  we  had  discovered  that  many  beauti- 
ful objects  were  round;  and  had  concluded 
that  roundness  was  the  element  essential  to 
beauty.  This,  of  course,  is  not  true ;  but  if 
it  were  true  we  should  have  in  roundness 
what  I  speak  of  here  as  an  objective  quality ; 
we  always  think  of  roundness  as  inhering  in 
objects ;  we  project  roundness  into  the  outer 
world  of  objective  things.  To  attempt  to 
identify  beauty  with  some  one  or  more  such 
objective  qualities  is,  I  say,  in  line  with  the 
most  natural  movement  of  thought;  for  we 
all  have  an  inveterate  habit  of  objectifying 
every  mental  state. 

The  Greek  philosophers  had  but  begun  to 


THE   OBSERVER'S   STANDPOINT.  9 

see  dimly  the  subjective  aspect  of  things;  and 
it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  Aristotle 
recorded  a  list  of  objective  qualities,  such  as 
order,  symmetry,  a  certain  magnitude,  upon 
which  he  made  the  beautiful  dependent.  It 
is  evident,  however,  upon  the  most  superficial  r- 
view,  that  beauty,  in  the  wider  sense  in  which  T-^ 
^  we  are  considering  it,  cannot  be  bound  within 
any  such  narrow  limits.  Few  other  thinkers 
have  dared  to  list  the  qualities  of  the  object 
which  determined  its  beauty ;  but  this  is,  in 
my  opinion,  not  because  the  method  has  not 
occurred  to  them,  but  because  they  have  be- 
come so  soon  convinced  of  the  futility  of  the 
attempt  to  gain  satisfactory  result  by  this 
means. 

The  most  persuasive  effort  in  the  direction 
of  objective  observation  is  that  made  by  the 
Idealist  philosophers,  who  claim  to  find  in 
beautiful  objects  some  fixed  Universal  or 
Absolute  which  determines  its  beauty.  This 
view  has  held  strongly  from  Plato's  time  to 
our  own  ;  but  the  great  difficulty  in  the  way    \ 


10  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

of  the  acceptance  of  any  of  the  many  sug- 
gested schemes  of  Absolute  or  Universal  -Es- 
thetics is  that  they  one  and  all  fail  to  account 
for  those  differences  of  standard  which  have 
led  the  bewildered  man  to  cry  de  gicstibus  non 
est  disputanduni:  , 

If  there  be  a  fixed  Universal  or  Absolute' 
Beauty,  we  may  well  ask,  How  does  it  happen 
that  you  and  I  do  not  both  see  it  in  the  same 
object?  Is  this  due,  as  Bergmann  has  sug- 
gested, to  real  differences  in  the  object  seen, 
which  we  mistakenly  think  to  be  alike  for 
each  of  us  ?  Then  surely  we  have  gained  no 
fundamental  principle. 

Is  it  due  to  differences  of  our  own  develop- 
ment, as  Lotze  held ;  so  that  you,  my  reader, 
see- a  beauty  in  an  object  that  I,  in  my  less 
developed  condition,  cannot  grasp  ?  This  will 
indeed  enable  us  to  account  for  more  or  less 
of  beauty,  in  proportion  to  our  state  of  devel- 
opment \  but  not,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  for  the 
fact  that  what  I  in  my  childhood  held  to  be 
beautiful,  I  now  find  to  be  positively  uglj^ 


y\^' 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  11 

nor  for  the  fact  that  what  I  call  beautiful 
in  my  less  developed  state,  you  with  your 
higher  cultivation  find  to  be  distinctly  bad  in 
aBsthetic  quality,  the  object  thus  not  merely 
lacking  something  of  a  special  characteristic, 
but  really  possessing  its  opposite.  | 

/T^  K^There  is  another  difficulty  about  this  notion 
v  f\  of  a  fixed  Absolute  of  beauty ;  viz.,  that  it 
fails  to  make  comprehensible  the  'fact  which 
is  well  recognized,  that  some  men  who  are 
v6ry  sensitive  to  art  in  some  of  its  develop- 
ments are  utterly  incapable  of  appreciating 
its  glories  in  other  developments  of  a  diverse 
kind.  The  musician  perhaps  cares  little  for 
paintings;  the  sculptor  perhaps  nothing  for 
music  But  if  beauty  were  a  fixed  objective 
thing  that  we  were  striving  to  reach,  or  to 
gain  a  glimpse  of,  then  if  the  glimpse  were 
obtained  in  the  direction  of  the  development 
of  one  art,  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  why 
the  capacity  to  recognize  this  beauty  in  con- 
nection with  other  arts  should,  in  any  case, 
be  lacking. 


12  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

Now  there  is  no  objection  to  the  objective 
view  itself,  and  we  might  well  adopt  it,  if  it 
led  us  anywhere ;  but  investigations  on  this 
line  have  failed  us  in  the  past,  and  there 
seems  little  reason  to  hope  that  they  will  aid 
us  greatly  in  the  future ;  and,  in  truth,  the 
'  beautiful  is  too  egotistic,  too  clearly  beautiful 
for  me,  to  be  considered  as  inhering  in  the 
object  itself,  and  I  wish  now  to  ask  the  reader 
to  turn  to  the  subjective  view:  to  consider 
his  or  her  mental  experience  at  the  moment 
when  he  or  she  is  impressed  by  the  beauty  of 
an  object. 

Of  subjective  views  there  are  many;  theo- 
ries dependent  upon  attempts  to  analyze  the 
special  state  of  mind  into  which  we  are  thrown 
as  we  contemplate  a  work  of  art  or  some  beau- 
tiful object  in  nature. 

There  have  been  men  who  have  emphasized 
the  importance  of  the  kind  of  sensations  re- 
ceived when  we  are  thus  impressed.  Of 
Baumgarten  we  have  spoken.  In  our  genera- 
tion Grant  Allen  stands  as  the  special  expo- 


v^ 


UrZW^^iU^Cu^  '^^' 


■^..^.ju^      ■  ■j-^^t::^.^'^ 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  13 

nent  of  sucli  doctrine  There  have  been  men 
who  have  emphasized  the  strictly  emotional 
conditions  aroused  during  the  impression ;  e.g., 
Alison,  James  Mill,  Burke,  Guyau.  There 
have  been  others  without  number  who  have 
thought  that  the  intellectual  forms-  of  mental 
life  arising  as  the  result  of  the  impression, 
were  all  important.  Rationalism  and  for- 
malism have  developed  into  mysticism ;  which 
is  itself  a  form  of  aesthetic  experience,  that 
leads  one  to  cling  blindly  to  the  doctrines 
involved  even  if  their  ground  be  shown 
to  be  inadequate. 

W^.  cannot  stop  here  to  examine  these 
doctrines  in  detail.  The  interested  reader 
may  refer  td^^my  fuller  work,  I*ain,  Pleas- 
ure, and  Esthetics,  for  discussion  of  these 
special  theories.  I  think  it  is  there  shown 
that  they  all  fail  in  their  attempts  at  limi- 
tation ;  and  it  is  generally  agreed  to-day  by 
the  best  thinkers  that  all  elements  of  our 
mental  life,  whether  sensational,  or  emotional, 
or  intellectual,  or  of  will,  are  exercised  in  the 


y-i^-x^-^  '^^r^' 


14  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

state  of  miiM  which  gives  us  the  notion  of 
the  beautiful.  This  implies  that  there  is 
some  common  subjective  quality  attachable 
to  all  these  mental  states  which  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  aesthetic  phenomena 

To  indicate  what  I  mean,  let  us  suppose 
that  we  had  noticed  that  a  certain  grade  of 
intensity  of  Sensation  was  always  beautiful, 
and  that  we  had  extended  this  thought  to 
Emotion,  Intellect,  and  Will.  Then  we  should 
be  able  to  claim  that  intensity  was  of  the 
essence  of  beauty.  Of  course  this  is  not 
true ;  but  if  it  were,  we  should  here  have 
the  essence  of  beauty  placed  in  a  subjective 
quality;  for  intensity  is  clearly  not  in  the 
object  (although  its  cause  may  be),  but  it  is 
distinctly  in  us.  Now  such  a  quality  as  we 
are  in  search  of  I  think  we  have  in  pleasure, 
which  is  clearly  a  subjective  quality,  and  one 
that  is  attached  to  Sensation,  to  Emotion,  to 
Intellect!,  and  to  Will.  To  this  special  char- 
acteristic of  the  aesthetic  mental  impression 
"invish  now  to  draw  the  reader's  particular 
attention. 


^ 


THE   OBSEEVER'S   STANDPOINT.  15 

Thinkers  of  varied .  authority  and  of  all 
schools,  from  Aristotle  down,  have  acknowl- 
edged explicitly  or  implicitly  the  connection 
between  beauty  and  pleasure.  Indeed,  we 
might  consider  this  a  commonplace  but  for 
the-  fact  that  we  find  doubt  in  the  matter 
in  the  minds  of  many  art  workers,  and 
theoretical  opposition  on  the  part  of  certain 
formalistic  thinkers  who  distinctly  deny  the 
importance  of  the  connection :  Von  Hart- 
man,  for  instance,  takes  this  position.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  not  difficult  to  find  au- 
thorities from  Epicurus  to  Hume  whose  state- 
ments may  be  interpreted  as  decisive  expres- 
sions of  the  view  for  which  I  argue;  and 
there  are  some  few  men,  the  noted  Fechner 
for  example,  who  distinctly  base  Esthetics 
upon  the  science  of  pleasure.  But  at  the 
very  beginning   of  this   consideration,   frpm,j^;^^* 

,the  hedonic  standpoint,  we--are-raet  by  the  'l^^i.^  ft^-i 
''a  « 

evident  fact  that,  while  all  aesthetic  phenom- 
ena are  pleasurable,  not  all  pleasures  are 
held  to  be  aesthetic.     It  seems,  therefore,  that 


16  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

it  will  be  necessary  for  us  to  indicate  the 
special  kinds  of  pleasures  which  are  aesthetic, 
if  we  are  to  make  pleasure  fundamental  to 
^Esthetics ;  if  we  are  to  treat  the  science  of 
the  beautiful  as  a  branch  of  hedonics,  —  the 
science  of  pleasure.  The  problem  before  us 
then  may  be  stated  in  the  form  of  this  ques- 
tion: What  are  the  bounds  of  the  aesthetic 
within  the  hedonic  field  ? 

We  must,  however,  avoid  making  too  much 
of  the  separation  of  which  we  have  just  been 
speaking:  the  distinctions,  indeed,  are  too 
easily  emphasized,  and  the  connections  too 
often  lost  sight  of  by  theoretical  writers. 
But  if  one  examine  the  literary  work  of  art 
*^  critics,  and  the  more  or  less  philosophic  and 
scientific  writings  that  deal  with  the  facts 
of  ^Esthetics  rather  than  its  theory,  one  will 
find  little  more  than  descriptions  of  pleasure- 
getting  coupled  with  attempts  to  arrange 
this  pleasure-getting  in  a  logical  way.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  one  examine  the  writings 
of  those  who  have  studied  most  closely  the 


'■y 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  17 

psychology  of  pleasure,  he  will  find  SBsthetic , 
phenomena  treated  altogether  as  the  best 
recognized  data  of  the  science  of  pleasure, 
exactly  as  the  simplest  sense-pleasures  are 
used.  Evidently  then  it  is  the  connection 
between  the  two  sets  of  phenomena  that  we 
must  ever  bear  in  mind  throughout  what 
follows.!  A  suggestive  argument  in  favour  of 
this  connection  is  "f^iiuuQ  if  we  consider  any 
average  complex  aesthetic  object,  which,  if 
we  notice  its  characteristics  with  care,  we 
find  to  be  very  wide  in  its  effects  upon  us, 
and  yet  embodying  certain  special  elements 
that  appear  emphatically  pleasant.  If  now 
we  eliminate  in  thought  the  pleasurable 
elements  one  by  one,  we  find  that  while  in 
the  main  the  object  does  not  change  its  mass, 
its  aesthetic  quality  gradually  disappears. 
We  may  acknowledge  still  that  the  object 
has  a  right  to  be  named  aesthetic,  because  of 
the  opinions  of  others  and  because  of  our 
own  judgments  in  the  past ;  but  for  our- 
selveS;  at  the  time,  it  has  lost  all  that  makes 


18  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

it  worthy  of  being  called  by  so  honourable 
a  name.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  fact 
that  an  object  which  but  a  moment  ago  was 
aesthetic  for  us,  may  become  unaesthetic  by 
the  degradation  into  indifference  or  positive 
painfulness  of  the  special  elements  which 
were  giving  us  pleasure.  The  suggestion  of 
a  painful  association  with  some  essential 
element  in  an  art  complex  will  for  all  time 
reduce  for  us  the  aesthetic  value  of  the  whole 
form.  I  One  special  mountain  of  great  natural 
charm  has  lost  for  me  all  of  its  impressive- 
ness,  because  a  light-hearted  companion  once 
compared  its  autumn  colouring  with  that  of 
"corned-beef  hash."  It  is  by  a  similar  proc- 
ess that  the  average  art  critic  makes  and 
unmakes  aesthetic  objects  for  the  masses: 
degrading  one  object  of  real  merit  by  ridi- 
cule, always  thereafter  to  be  associated  with 
it ;  giving  a  fallacious  value  to  another  by 
the  unmerited  praise  lavished  upon  it. 

It  thus  appears-  very  clear,  I  think,  that 
the  state  of  aesthetic  impression  is  most 
closely  bound  to  the  state  of  pleasure. 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  19 

But  if  the  connection  be  so  intimate,  and 
the  aesthetic  be  no  more  than  a  part  of  the 
pleasure-field,  one  would  say  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment  that  it  should  be  no  difficult 
task,  in  some  rough  way,  to  mark  off  tliat 
paFt"  of  tl'iu  fiuld  which  is  aesthetic  from  that 
which  is  not.  The  task,  however,  is  not  -^'^Tj*^ 
nearly  so  easy  as  we  expect  to  find  it. 

In  my  larger  work  I  have  shown  that  we 
cannot  separate  the  aesthetic  by  the  cutting 
off  of  sensational  pleasures,  a  view  held  by 
no  less  an  authority  than  Kant,  but  opposed 
by  other  eminently  authoritative  observers, 
e.g.f  Lotze  and  Lippa.  In  fact,  there  is  no  at- 
tempt whatever  to  cut  off  any  but  the  so- 
called  "  lower  pleasures,"  and  these,  after  all, 
are  judged  by  ethical,  and  not  by  hedonic 
standards.  "~  '.''■^"^TTt*- 

Nor  can  we  cut  off  the  emotional  nor  the 
intellectual;  nor  again  the  active  pleasures, 
as  Grant  Allen  would  have  us  do;  nor  can 
we  limit  the  aesthetic  to  pleasures  of  a  moral 
or  spiritical  type  j  nor  to  those  attendant  upon 


20  AESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

the  use  of  the  imagination.  Neither  will 
limitations  to  immediacy  of  pleasure  effect, 
nor  to  width  of  pleasurable  impression,  suffice 
us.  All  of  these  theories  have  been  advanced 
and  stoutly  defended,  but  have  shown  fatal 
weaknesses  upon  close  examination. 

We  are  brought,  indeed,  to  see  that  in  aes- 
thetic impressions  there  are  no  pleasures 
whatever  that  cannot  become  part  and  parcel 
of  the  pleasurable  aesthetic  effect.  The  ordi- 
nary use  of  language  confirms  this  view,  for 
notice  how  freely  we  use  the  word  "beautiful" 
to  describe  the  most  commonplace  of  pleas- 
ures. The  child  calls  his  ^sweets  beautiful. 
The  schoolgirl  talks  of  having  a  "beautiful 
time  "  at  ail  entertainment,  and  the  patholo- 
gist speaks  of  a  beautiful  preparation  of  some 
cancerous  tissue.  The  Germans  use  "  schon  " 
in  much  the  same  way ;  and  so  it  is  with  the 
more  varied  expressions  used  by  the  French- 
man. 

Now  if  no  pleasure  of  impression  can  be 
cut  away  from  the  rest  and  held  to  be  non- 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  21 

aesthetic,  then  it  is  apparent  that  the  dis- 
tinction between  non-aesthetic  pleasures  and 
aesthetic  pleasures  cannot  arise  by  difference 
between  pleasures  in  impression,  but  must 
arise  in  the  process  of  judging  about  them ; 
in  other  words,  it  is  only  when  we  come  to 
ask  ourselves  whether  some  special  impres- 
sion that  we  call  a  pleasure  is  aesthetic  or 
not,  that  we  find  ourselves  making  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  two  fields  in  an  act  of 
judgment.  /  This  is  an  important  distinction 
and  must  not  be  lost  sight  of ;  we  shall  refer 
to  it  again.    \<^  /^-^J?  't2)     ^  ^ 

But  at  this  point  I  wish  to  refer  to 
one  special  emphasis  considered  in  the  first 
part  of  this  chapter.  We  there  observed 
that  a  very  large  number  of  authoritative 
thinkers,  not  to  speak  of  lesser  lights,  have 
looked  upon  beauty  as  an  objective  quality; 
as  something  fixed;  an  Absolute  or  Univer- 
sal. This  they  could  not  have  done  had  they 
not  in  introspection  found  an  appearance  of 


22  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

stability,  of  fixity,  in  connection  with  aesthetic 
phenomena ;  and  the  question  at  once  arises, 
may  not  the  difference  between  non-aesthetic 
and  aesthetic  pleasures  be  determined  by  the 
permanence  of  those  which  are  called  aesthetic. 

But  this  can  scarcely  be  true,  for  pleas- 
ures are  notably  evanescent,  and  we  all  recog- 
nize this  fact.  From  childhood  to  mature 
age,  we  are  found  deploring  the  loss  at  one 
moment  of  a  pleasure  we  were  but  lately 
experiencing ;  the  ephemeral  nature  of  pleas- 
ure is  the  theme  of  the  pessimist,  and  a  fact 
the  optimist  strives  to  make  intelligent. 

If,  however,  we  are  compelled  to  admit 
that  it  is  impossible  to  sift  out  some  certain 
class  of  pleasures  which  are  permanent,  and 
identify  them  with  what  is  aesthetic ;  still  it 
does  appear  possible,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
arrive  at  a  relatively  permanent  field  of 
pleasure  in  various  ways,  although  experi- 
ence and  theory  both  deny  the  possibility  of 
there  being  any  permanency  of  any  specific 
pleasure. 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  23 

In  the  first  place  we  should  find,  if  we 
stopped  to  study  the  nature  of  pleasure,  that 
the  more  powerful  the  pleasures  are  the 
more  quickly  their  apparent  strength  wanes ; 
that  the  rapidity  of  the  waning  is  much  less 
apparent  when  the  pleasures  are  of  low 
degree.  If,  then,  we  can  hold  a  large  num- 
ber of  lighter  pleasures  together  by  some 
process  of  summation,  if  we  may  use  the  term, 
by  adding  them  together  as  it  were,  we  ought 
to  be  able  to  reach  something  that  would  be 
less  evanescent  than  any  simple  pleasure  itself 
could  be. 

That  this  summation  of  pleasures  is  pos- 
sible, is  evident  to  aU  of  us  when  we  think 
of  certain  sensations  that  yield  to  us  no 
noticeable  delight  unless  they  are,  at  one  and 
the  same  time,  widely  felt.  We  may  touch 
our  finger-tip  to  satin  or  fur  with  none  of 
the  noticeable  pleasure  that  we  find  when  the 
whole  surface  of  our  hand  is  passed  over  the 
same  satin  or  fur,  by  which  latter  action  we 
bring  innumerable  touch-nerve  terminals  into 


24  -ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

activity  at  one  time.  We  may  not  notice  the 
application  of  heat  to  any  single  spot  on  our 
body  to  be  at  all  agreeable,  but  if  we  stand 
before  a  fire  on  a  cool  day  the  sum  of  all  the 
stimulations  of  the  many  heat-nerve  terminals 
gives  us  one  of  the  most  voluminous  pleasures 
we  can  obtain.  Now  I  think  that  if  we  ob- 
serve our  experience  of  what  is  beautiful  in 
natural  objects  and  in  many  types  of  art 
work,  we  shall  find  that  a  great  part  of  the 
pleasurable  effect  produced  is  due  to  the  mass- 
ing together  of  many  delights,  which  indi- 
vidually are  not  notably  vivid.  We  will  at 
once  recognize  this  truth,  if  we  consider  the 
varied  pleasant  stimuli  of  colour,  of  liae,  of 
form,  that  are  involved  in  our  perception  of 
a  beautiful  scene  in  nature ;  and  so  it  is 
with  the  pictorial  arts  which  directly  follow 
nature's  leadings.  We  find  the  same  thing 
strongly  marked  in  the  field  of  music,  espe- 
cially in  its  later  complex  development ;  there 
we  depend  largely  for  our  aesthetic  delight, 
any  one  wHl  admit,  upon  the  fulness  of  the 


THE  observer's  STANDPOINT.      25 

background  of  aural  pleasures,  less  distinct 
in  themselves  than  those  called  forth  by  the 
melodic  progressions.  The  same  fulness  of 
pleasure  background  may  be  discerned  in  all 
of  the  greatest  art  works. 

Looking  in  another  direction,  we  find  that 
an  appearance  of  permanent  pleasure  may  he 
obtained^  if  we  are  able  to  bring  about  the 
cessation  of  activities  that  are  pleasant  before 
their  pleasure  wanes  and  is  transformed  into 
pain;  such  waning  of  pleasure,  and  trans- 
formation into  pain,  occurring  in  all  di- 
rections under  continuous  stimulation.  To 
explain  what  I  mean  let  us  take  the  example 
of  sugar.  We  are  not  compelled  to  eat  sugar 
as  a  matter  of  diet ;  and  we  take  it  only  so 
far  as  we  like  to  do  so,  and  we  stop  eating 
it  just  as  soon  as  our  liking  begins  to  fail 
us.  Consequently  we  naturally  think  of  the 
taste  of  sugar  as  being  pleasant,  and  Mr.  Her- 
bert Spencer  has  actually  been  led  to  say 
in  some  one  of  his  writings,  that  sugar  is  a 
taste  that  can  never  be  experienced  in  any 


26  ESTHETIC  PRINCIPLES. 

disagreeable  phase.  But  I  think  a  little  ex- 
perimentation will  prove  to  any  one  that,  if 
he  keep  on  eating  sugar  long  enough,  its 
taste  will  become  exceedingly  unpleasant  to 
him.  This  is  proven  in  truth  by  the  fact 
that  the  shop-girls  in  candy  shops  are  not 
put  under  restriction.  If  the  candy  before 
them  continued  to  bring  pleasure  with  its 
sweetness,  some  restriction  to  the  eating 
of  it  would  have  to  be  adopted  by  their 
employers. 

Now  let  us  see  whether  this  principle  is 
one  which  artists  naturally  adopt.  It  is-  at 
y^*'^"^.  •-■onoe  apparent  that  the  stimuli  obtained  from 
the  beautiful  objects  created  by  man  are 
under  control;  that  their  special  impressions 
may  be  withdrawn  from  consciousness  at 
our  will  so  soon  as  they  begin  to  pall  upon 
us.  It  is  most  important,  if  we  are  to  retain 
the  notion  of  beauty  in  any  special  direction, 
that  we  avoid  any  continuous  attention  to 
the  special  impressions  involved,  after  they 
have  sunk  to  indifference  or  have  begun  to 
tire  us. 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  27 

To  make  this  clearer  let  us  illustrate  this 
point  to  some  extent.  As  our  musical  pro- 
grammes are  arranged  there  is  at  times, 
for  some— pwpfe,  difficulty  in  avoiding  this 
tiredness,  although,  as  we  shall  presently 
see,  this  difficulty  is,  -t^^^a  g^e»t  dogroo^ 
compensated  for;  but  the  arts  that  are  de- 
pendent upon  the  organe-ef  sight  have  here 
a  pre-eminent  advantage,  for  a  simple  turn- 
ing of  the  head  or  eyes,  ©r—closing^  of^ -the 
-eyeMis,  "^ill  enable  us  to  avoid  continua- 
tion of  the  stimulation,  this  protective  ac- 
tion indeed  taking  place  automatically  just 
as  soon  as  a  glimmering  of  painfulness  begins 
to  appear.  With  the  ear,  however,  stimula- 
tion cannot  be  controlled  by  any  such  simple 
movements.  We  must  take  ourselves  bodily 
from  the  concert-hall,  or  else  we  can  only 
avoid  the  sound-painfulness,  if  it  is  beginning 
to  arise,  by  the  stopping  of  the  ears,  or  less 
fully,  but  more  graciously,  distract  our  atten- 
tion by  conversation,  or  still  i^ore  graciously 
by  watching  those  around  us.  I  -In  fact,  what 


28  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

we  may  call  the  social  difficulties  that  go 
with  control  of  the  stimuli  to  the  ear,  affect 
our  theatre-goers  and  music-lovers  not  a 
little :  we  learn  by  experience  that  others 
will  watch  us  at  the  theatre  and  opera  house, 
and  this  goes  far  to  account  for  the  fact  that 
we  all,  but  women  especially,  feel  impelled 
to  wear  our  finest  clothes  and  to  make 
ourselves  as  attractive  as  possible,  when 
going  to  hear  play  or  opera,  at  which  con- 
versational distractions  are  less  allowable 
than  in  the  picture-gallery,  where  we  find 
dress  much  less  considered.  The  inveter- 
ate habit  of  the  eating  of  sweets  at  the 
plays  is  also  a  means  of  distraction,  which 
has  been  in  vogue  ever  since  the  time  of  the 
Greek  supremacy.  Here  perhaps  I  may  be 
allowed  to  make  a  suggestion  to  the  musi- 
cal artist.  The  skilled  musician  is  far  too 
apt  to  misjudge  the  capacity  of  the  audi- 
ence he  calls  together;  too  often  does  he 
forget  the  danger  of  tiring  his  audience 
with  music  which  they  cannot  comprehend 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  (29 


SO  well  as  he  does  himself.  Many  music- 
lovers  would  attend  symphonic  concerts  who 
now  do  not,  were  it  not  that  under  existing 
social  conditions  they  are  unable  to  avoid 
the  disagreeableness  which  goes  with  the 
necessity  of  listening  after  they  have  become 
tired.  The  German  habit  of  listening  to 
music  whilst  smoking  and  eating  and  drink- 
ing is  much  more  rational  for  the  average 
audience;  for  thus  the  hearer  retains  his 
ability  to  change  his  field  of  attention  with- 
out disturbance  to  his  neighbours. 

"Bet-  there  is  still  another  means  by  which 
an  apparent  pleasure  permanence  may  he  ob- 
tained: viz.,  hy  the  shifting  of  the  field  of 
mental  elements  ;  by  the  turning  of  our  atten- 
tion successively  to  different  subjects  or  dif- 
ferent qualities  of  the  same  subject,  so  that 
as  one  set  of  pleasures  fades,  another  set  will 
arise  to  take  its  place.  That  this  kind  of 
pleasure  permanence  belongs  to  all  aesthetic 
objects  I  think  will  be  agreed.  In  examin- 
ing a  picture  or  a  piece  of  sculpture  we  find 


30  ESTHETIC   PEINCIPLES. 

ourselves  constantly  changing  our  point  of 
view,  either  actually,  physically,  or  more  often 
merely  mentally.  But  it  is  here  that  the 
Arts  of  the  Ear  have  a  decided  advantage 
over  the  Arts  of  the  Eye,  for  the  playwright 
or  musical  composer  has  it  in  his  power  to 
stop  at  will  one  series  of  effects  and  substi- 
tute for  it  another  series,  and  this  process  he 
may  continue  almost  indefinitely,  in  a  way 
that  is  impossible  for  the  pictorial  artist  as 
he  at  present  limits  himself :  it  is  not  impos- 
sible that  some  day,  through  the  development 
of  the  panoramic  art,  this  power  may  be 
added  to  the  resources  of  him  who  appeals 
directly  to  the  eye  only. 

I  think  my  reader  will  now  agree  to  this : 
that  while  we  have  found  that  there  are  no 
pleasures  which  are  not  evanescent;  on  the 
other  hand,  we  have  discovered  that  there  are 
pleasure-fields  that  are  relatively  permanent. 

But  we  have  seen  above  that  it  is  in  the 
act  of  judgment   that  we  separate  non-aas- 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  31 

thetic  from  aesthetic  pleasures.  It  seems  but 
a  step,  therefore,  to  the  fundamental  hypothe- 
sis that  I  shall  uphold,  which  is  this :  that, 
as  we  saw  in  the  early  part  of  the  chapter,, 
all  that  is  pleasure  at  the  time  makes  part 
of  the  aesthetic  impression;  but  only  that 
is  judged  to  be  aesthetic  which  appears  to 
be  permanently  pleasant  in  revival,  ive.  m 
the  reflection  that  is  necessary  in  an  act  of 
judgment. 

That  which  in  memory  appears  thus  to  be 
a  stable  pleasure,  we  call  aesthetic;  what  is 
indifferent  in  contemplation,  we  tolerate  only 
as  an  adjunct ;  what  is  painful  in  reflection, 
we  cast  out  of  the  aesthetic  field  entirely. 
We  do  not  always  judge  a  work  to  be  non- 
aesthetic  because  of  a  painful  element  in  its 
revival,  but  we  exclude  that  element  as  non- 
aesthetic. 

But  what  shall  we  say  of  those  so-called 
"pleasures"  that  are  judged  to  be  non-aes- 
thetic ?  I  iioid  that  in  the  recall  necessary 
to  judgment  they  are  not  pleasures  at  all; 


32  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

they  are  revived  mental  elements  to  which 
the  name  "pleasure"  persistently  clings,  al- 
though the  actual  pleasure  has  gone  out  of 
them  entirely,  the  name  clinging  because  of 
the  strong  pleasant  emphasis  of  the  original 
state. 

Thus  the  so-called  "  lower  pleasures  "  have 
been  powerful  pleasures  in  our  original  expe- 
rience, but  in  memory  the  experience  is  not 
pleasurable,  or  else  it  is  so  closely  bound  up 
with  restrictive  painfulness  connected  with 
our  ethical  life  that  we  do  not  find  the 
experience  as  a  whole  to  be  part  of  our 
relatively  permanent  pleasure-field ;  hence  we 
call  these  states  non-8Bsthetic,  although  we 
still  call  them  pleasures  because  the  name 
was  so  closely  attached  to  the  original  expe- 
rience, of  which  the  revival  only  is  consid- 
ered in  our  assthetic  judgment,  i  Before  we 
attempt  to  illustrate  this  view,  we  must 
pause  to  consider  to  some  extent  the  nature 
of  pleasure  and  pain,  which  we  shall  do  in 
the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.      II. 

Pleasure  and  Pain. 

No  one  of  my  readers,  I  believe,  will 
regret  that  the  study  of  the  fundamental 
aesthetic  problem  leads  us  to  fix  our  atten- 
tion upon  Pleasure. 

There  is  certainly  no  more  fascinating  sub- 
ject of  investigation  among  the  many  which 
appeal  to  the  psychologist  than  that  of 
Pleasure  and  its  correlate  Pain;  but  it  is 
a  subject  about  which  the  psychological 
world  is  not  at  all  at  ease;  it  is  the  centre 
just  now  of  polemical  oppositions,  for  it  has 
been  until  very  lately  sadly  neglected  by 
the  present  generation  of  psychologists,  who, 
with  new  methods  and  clearer  observation, 
have  developed  what  they  somewhat  egotis- 

D  83 


34  AESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

tically  call  the  "new  psychology."  I  shall 
not  ask  my  reader  here  to  enter  the  field 
of  contention,  but  shall  rather  beg  him  for 
a  moment,  and  I  assm'e  him  for  only  a 
moment,  to  stand  with  me  aside  from  the 
polemical  turmoil  and  notice  the  drift  of 
opinion. 

What  are  the  characteristics  of  pleasures 
and  pains  by  which  we  are  enabled  to  re- 
late them  to  the  rest  of  our  conscious  life? 

Let  us  consider  first  the  answer  of  com- 
mon sense  to  the  question.  In  every-day 
conversation  we  find  ourselves  grouping  pleas- 
ures and  pains  together;  they  are  different 
states;  states  in  a  sense  exclusive  of  one 
another,  and  yet  in  some  way  so  bound 
together  that  we  can  scarcely  speak  of  them 
except  in  one  breath.  This  is  due,  doubt- 
less, to  the  fact  that,  in  common  experience, 
conscious  states  fade  from  pleasantness  into 
painfulness  with  no  distinct  line  of  demar- 
cation between  the  two,  and  often  with  no 
change  in  the  mental  elements,  except  the 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  35 

pleasure  and  pain  themselves.  It  is  evi- 
dent, therefore,  that  it  will  be  logically  and 
psychologically  improper  to  group  pleasure 
and  pain  apart  from  one  another,  the  one 
under  one  class  of  mental  phenomena,  and 
the  other  under  another  class. 

Still  this  improper  course  is  exactly  what 
we  do  find  adopted  by  plain  people  in  every- 
day conversation,  and  by  more  thoughtful 
men  when  they  speak  incautiously.  We  are 
very  likely  to  speak  of  pains  as  sensational, 
and  of  pleasures  as  emotional.  But  sensa- 
tions and  emotions  are  certainly  two  very 
diverse  species  of  mental  phenomena.  Sen- 
sations are  those  mental  states  that  are 
determined,  acknowledgedly  in  all  but  some 
pathological  cases,  by  the  action  of  some  spe- 
cial organs  terminating  in  the  bodily  surfaces, 
and  brought  into  activity  by  special  envi- 
ronmental conditions:  for  example.  Sight, 
Hearing,  Touch,  Pressure,  Taste,  Smell,  Heat, 
Cold.  Emotions,  on  the  other  hand,  as  we 
shall  see  in  the  next  chapter,  are  the  mental 


36  .SJSTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

side  of  certain  reflex  reactions  of  the  whole 
nervous  organism,  dependent  upon  the  per- 
ception of  external  objects.  Such  states  are 
Joy,  Sorrow,  Love,  Fear,  Surprise,  etc. 

A  critical  examination  leads  us  to  see  that 
pleasures  and  pains  cannot  be  sensations  for 
many  reasons  which  I  cannot  detail  here ; 
but  it  is  to  be  noted  that  there  has  been  no 
natural  claim  that  pleasures  are  sensations, 
the  claim  being  limited  to  pains,  which  are 
most  notable  as  produced  apparently  by  the 
same  actions,  which  involve  special  forms  of 
sensation;  viz.,  by  blows,  cuts,  crushings, 
burnings,  etc. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  critical  examination 
shows  us  that  pleasures  and  pains  cannot  be 
emotions,  for  pleasures  and  pains  are  not 
called  out  by  the  perception  of  external  ob- 
jects as  emotions  are,  nor  can  they  for  a 
moment  be  looked  upon  as  the  mental  coin- 
cidents of  reflex  reactions  of  our  whole 
nervous  organism,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
emotions.     These  facts  taken  together,  with 


THE    OBSEKVER's   STANDPOINT.  37 

the  close  connection  between  the  words 
"pleasure"  and  "pain"  first  noted,  would 
naturally  lead  us  to  the  conclusion  that 
pleasure  and  pain  are  in  some  way  connected 
both  with  sensations  and  with  emotions,  and 
that  pain  is  especially  emphatic  in  sensa- 
tional consciousness,  while  pleasure  is  most 
prominently  noted  in  the  life  of  emotion. 

The  importance  of  the  wide  connection 
thus  noted  is  emphasized  when  we  consider 
that  purely  intellectual  operations  and  acts 
of  will,  both  of  which  are  naturally  sepa- 
rated from  sensation  and  emotion  alike,  still 
somehow  have  pleasure  and  pain  attached 
to  them  also.  We  have  what  we  call  intel- 
lectual pleasures  and  pains,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  that  in  common  speech  there  is  indi- 
cated the  conception  of  a  close  connection 
between  pleasure-pain  and  action  of  will. 

The  general  connection  with  all  fields  of 
mental  activity  thus  acknowledged  by  us  in 
every-day  life  may  be  accounted  for  on  at 
least  one  of  three  grounds. 


38  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

1st.  It  has  been  lield  that  pleasure  and 
pain  are  the  fundamental  elements  out  of 
which  all  else  of  mental  life  has  been  devel- 
oped. This  view  is  fascinating  to  any  one 
of  a  philosophic  trend,  because  of  its  monistic 
leanings;  but  evidence  in  favour  of  it  fails, 
and  the  view  has  not  been  defended  by  any 
man  who  is  acknowledged  to  be  a  master  of 
the  first  order. 

2d.  The  explanation  of  the  facts,  which 
may  in  a  sense  be  said  to  be  orthodox  in  our 
day,  is  that  of  Kant  and  his  successors,  viz., 
that  pleasure  and  pain  are  a  mental  series, 
sui  generis,  brought  into  activity  in  some 
occult  way  by  all  other  forms  of  mental 
action.  This  hypothesis  was  constructed 
originally  to  fill  out  a  gap  in  metaphysical 
systemization,  and  a  critical  examination  of 
it,  from  a  psychological  standpoint,  shows 
that  the  evidence  in  its  favour  is  exceedingly 
weak. 

3d.  There  is  another  theory,  however, 
which  seems  to  account  for  the  facts  more 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  39 

satisfactorily,  viz.,  that  pleasures  and  pains 
are  qualities  either  of  which,  under  the  proper 
conditions,  may  belong  to  any  element  of  con- 
sciousness, and  one  of  which  must  in  any  case 
belong  to  each  element. 

This  hypothesis  seems  to  meet  the  psycho- 
logical objections  which  arise  in  opposition  to 
the  other  hypotheses  suggested  above,  and  is 
favoured  by  much  evidence  reached  in  many 
directions,  which  I  cannot  detail  here. 

Now  if  we  turn  away  from  common  sense 
to  a  more  scientific  classification,  we  find  our- 
selves led  to  the  same  view.  If  we  examine 
the  studies  of  psychologists  and  philosophers 
in  the  past,  in  reference  to  this  subject,  we 
find  in  each  case  that  the  theory  defended  is 
based  upon  an  emphasis  of  some  special  form 
of  pleasure  or  pain,  and  an  attempt  to  relate 
all  other  pleasures  and  pains  to  this  special 
form,  which,  for  one  reason  or  another,  has 
become  emphasized  in  the  mental  life  of  the 
theorist.     We  are  thus   led  to   see  that  in 


40  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

general  there  are  two  wide  classes  of  pleas- 
ures and  two  wide  classes  of  pains,  and 
none  which  cannot  be  included  in  these  four 
classes. 

1st.  There  are  pains  and  also  pleasures 
connected  with  cessation  of  activities. 

The  pains  of  restriction,  of  disappointment, 
of  despair. 

The  pleasures  of  rest  after  strain. 

2d.  There  are  pains  and  also  pleasures  con- 
nected with  active  functioning. 

The  pains  of  excess,  of  strain,  of  hyper- 
normal  and  destructive  influences  upon  the 
tissues. 

The  pleasures  of  vigorous  exercise. 

But  it  is  not  difficult  to  show  that  unless 
we  are  to  attack  the  most  generally  accepted 
notions  concerning  the  physical  basis  of  men- 
tal action,  the  first  class  must  in  some  way  be 
subsumed  under  the  second.  For  it  is  clear 
that  no  consciousness  can  arise  by  mere  non- 
activity  of  a  nerve  organ,  and  therefore  that 
the  organs  which  cease  to  act  in  the  case  of 


THE   observer's    STANDPOINT.  41 

the  pains  of  restriction,  and  where  pleasures 
of  rest  arise,  cannot  be  the  source  of  the 
pain  and  pleasure  which  arise  in  conscious- 
ness. Hence  we  may  take  it  for  granted 
that  all  pains  and  all  pleasures  will  event- 
ually be  found  to  be  statable  in  terms  of 
activity  of  the  nerve  organs  which  are  giv- 
ing the  consciousness  at  the  moment  of  con- 
sideration. 

The  difference  between  pleasure  and  pain 
seems  to  be  determined  by  some  condition 
which  goes  with  rest  to  the  organs  which 
are  active  in  coincidence  with  pleasurable 
states.  This  leads  us  to  surmise  that  pain 
and  pleasure  may  be  determined  by  the  re- 
lation between  the  nutritive  condition,  which 
is  affected  by  rest,  and  the  condition  of  ac- 
tivity in  the  organs  which  are  giving  us 
the  pleasant  or  painful  consciousness ;  the 
pleasure  being  the  accompaniment  of  the  us- 
ing up  of  surplus  stored  energy,  and  the  pain 
arising  when  the  stimulus  calls  for  an  over- 
draught of  energy,  if  we  may  so  speak.     But 


42  AESTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

these  relations  between  activity  and  nutrition 
must  hold  for  all  of  the  nervous  basis  of  our 
conscious  life  ;  hence  we  must  expect  to  find 
pleasure  and  pain  to  be  general  qualities,  one 
of  which  must  belong  to  each  element  of  con- 
sciousness, and  either  of  which,  under  the 
proper  conditions,  may  belong  to  any  ele- 
ment. The  reader  will  remember  that  this 
is  the  conclusion  to  which  we  were  brought 
by  our  consideration  of  the  common-sense 
classification  earlier  in  the  chapter. 

But  my  reader  may  protest,  after  having 
promised  to  touch  so  lightly  upon  psychol- 
ogy, Why  have  you  led  us  through  this  long, 
distinctly  psychological  discussion  ?  Simply 
because  I  feel  sure  that  this  conclusion  as 
to  the  general  nature  of  pleasure  and  pain 
will  make  it  very  much  easier  for  us  to  un- 
derstand how  it  is  possible  to  reach  those 
summations  and  successions  of  pleasures 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  determine  our  aes- 
thetic field. 


THE    observer's   STANDPOINT.  43 

If  pleasures  are  qualities  attached  to  the 
elements  of  our  conscious  life,  then  summa- 
tions of  those  elements  that  are  pleasurable 
will  make  for  us  a  total  of  pleasure  which  we 
could  not  otherwise  reach ;  and  summations 
of  the  weaker  pleasures  we  have  seen  to  be 
characteristic  of  aesthetic  impressions.  If 
pleasure  is  so  related  to  the  elements  of 
our  mental  field,  then  also  is  it  easy  to  con- 
ceive how,  though  the  quality  in  them  may 
be  evanescent,  we  may  reach  a  relative  per- 
manency of  pleasure,  which  we  have  claimed 
to  be  essential  to  the  production  of  the 
aesthetic  field,  provided  we  shift  from  the 
elements  which  give  us  pleasure  at  one 
moment,  and  before  this  pleasure  wanes,  to 
others  which  in  their  turn  give  us  pleasure 
effects. 

Now  let  us  turn  back  to  an  examination 
of  the  general  aesthetic  theory  reached  in  the 
first  chapter,  and  see  how  far  it  serves  to  ex- 
plain the  most  prominent  of  aesthetic  facts. 


44  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

and  how  far  it  accords  with  the  theoretical 
views  held  by  the  masters  of  thought  in  the 
past. 

If  it  be  true  that  the  aesthetic  field  is  de- 
termined by  permanency  of  pleasure  quality, 
then  the  sort  and  kind  of  mental  elements 
that  are  thus  pleasurable  must  determine  the 
nature  of  what  we  speak  of  as  beautiful ; 
and,  as  people  differ  in  individuality  just  so 
far  as  they  differ  in  the  sort  and  kind  of 
elements  which  make  up  their  mental  life, 
so  we  should  be  led  to  expect  that  the 
nature  of  the  conception  of  the  beautiful 
would  differ  as  individualities  differ.  Clearly 
this  means  that  we  ought  to  expect  indi- 
vidual differences  of  judgment  as  to  what 
is  beautiful ;  and,  evidently,  this  is  a  fact 
patent  to  all  of  us. 

Differences  of  race,  and  differences  of  civ- 
ilization in  the  same  race,  are  determined  by 
differences  in  the  common  trend  within  the 
mental  lives  of  the  individuals  making  up 
the  races  compared.     Thus  we  should  expect 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  45 

to  find,  what  history  most  certainly  shows 
us,  viz.,  a  development  of  the  notion  of 
beauty  pari  passu  with  the  development  of 
racial  life.  The  barbarian  rejoices  in  decora- 
tions by  the  use  of  brilliancy  of  colour  and 
strength  of  contrast.  As  his  race  increases 
in  culture,  his  mental  life  becomes  more 
subtle  and  delicate,  and  that  which  he  calls 
beautiful  is  correspondingly  subtle  and  deli- 
cate in  its  nature. 

So  far  as  individual  and  racial  develop- 
ment correspond,  there  is  a  similar  change  in 
the  notion  of  beauty  in  the  individual  as 
he  grows.  The  child  of  civilized  parent- 
age delights  in  much  that  the  mature  barba- 
rian calls  beautiful;  when  he  has  developed 
towards  youth,  his  beautiful  objects  are  those 
which  appeal  to  the  emotional  life;  but  it  is 
not  until  later  that  he,  with  his  full  man- 
hood, finds  himself  in  sympathy  with  the 
standards  of  beauty  which  are  held  by  the 
best-cultured  men  of  his  age. 

The  occupations  of  a  race   also,  as  they 


46  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

determine  mental  fields,  should  thus  be  ex- 
pected to  influence  the  notion  of  the  beauti- 
ful; and  so  do  we  find  it.  The  chase,  war, 
and  actions  determined  by  the  coarser  pas- 
sions which  are  so  prominent  in  the  life 
of  the  barbarian  make  the  subject-matter  of 
his  art,  of  what  he  calls  beautiful.  Exam- 
ples of  this  we  see  in  the  art  product  of 
Egypt  and  Assyria,  and  in  that  of  Greece. 
As  the  over-valuation  of  mere  strength  gives 
way,  the  subjects  of  art  change  to  those 
which  emphasize  wider  interests  of  life.  The 
poets  sing  of  nobler  love;  of  moral  action 
under  difiicul,ty.  Our  modern  life,  which  has 
become  introspective  and  thoughtful,  brings 
with  it  a  wider  choice  of  subject  treated 
with  more  refined  intellectuality. 

The  forms  of  religious  belief,  so  powerfully 
influential  in  all  of  life's  products,  as  they 
change  and  develop,  should  also  bring,  as 
we  find  they  do,  alterations  of  the  ideal 
forms  of  art.  The  Gods,  represented  by  the 
Greek  artist,  give  place  to  the  Saints,  repre- 


THE   observer's   STANDPOINT.  47 

sented  in  the  works  of  the  masters  of  Italy. 
The  Greek  temple,  designed  to  contain  the 
worshipped  statue  of  a  God,  gives  place  to 
the  Gothic  cathedral,  with  its  spaces  for  the 
masses  within  its  walls. 

K  our  principle  be  true,  we  should  expect, 
furthermore,  to  find  theory  influenced  by 
mental  individuality  in  the  theorist,  and  we 
are  able  thus  to  account  for  the  sensational 
emphasis  by  a  scientist  like  Grant  Allen, 
interested  in  neurology  and  sensational  the- 
ory ;  for  the  emotional  emphasis  by  the  phi- 
lanthropist Burke,  and  by  the  Frenchman 
Guyau ;  for  the  intellectual  emphasis  by  the 
philosopher,  as  with  Hegel,  or  with  Schel- 
ling;  and  for  the  spiritual  emphasis  by  men 
like  Cousin  and  Ruskin. 

Our  principle  also  enables  us  to  explain 
the  fact  that  opposed  opinions  are  held  by 
men  of  the  highest  type  under  different  con- 
ditions of  thought:  as  an  instance  of  this 
opposition,  we  may  note  the  Socratic  empha- 
sis of  usefulness,  which  involves  recognition 


48  ESTHETIC    PRINCIPLES. 

of  an  end;  in  opposition  to  the  Kantian  ex- 
clusion of  recognized  aim.  The  principle 
explains,  also,  the  fact  spoken  of  above,  that 
men  who  are  most  susceptible  to  art  in  one 
direction  may  be  dullards  in  another.  The 
music-lover  may  take  no  interest  in  painting ; 
the  painter  none  in  music  or  poetry;  and 
this  because  their  "  faculties  "  are  but  par- 
tially and  narrowly  developed.  It  explains 
differences  of  view  held  by  the  same  man 
at  different  times  in  his  life;  as  an  example 
of  which  we  may  refer  to  Matthew  Arnold, 
who,  in  his  essay  on  Emerson,  says,  "  He  is 
not  plain  and  concrete  enough ;  in  other  words, 
not  poet  enough " ;  yet  in  his  essay  on 
Maurice  de  Gu^rin  we  find  him  saying, 
"Poetry  can  awaken  it"  (a  full  sense  of 
things)  "  in  u^  and  to  awaken  it  is  one  of  the 
highest  powers  of  poetry."  The  Arnolds  in 
the  two  cases  were  different  individualities, 
wrought  into  being  by  different  forces,  and 
expressing  the  different  notions  of  beauty 
as  regards  a  special  art  as  felt  by  the  two 
individuals  at  the  different   times. 


THE    observer's   STANDPOINT.  49 

The  scientist's  loss  of  delight  in  all  that 
he  had  once  called  beautiful,  as  confessed  by 
Charles  Darwin,  is  also  explicable  when  we 
consider  that  the  very  concentration  which 
has  given  to  the  world  his  magnificent  work, 
necessarily  cut  off  from  his  mental  life  those 
associations  which  make  possible  the  appreci- 
ation of  pleasure  of  a  relatively  permanent 
sort,  in  connection  with  the  objects  which 
he  used  to  call  beautiful  and  which  his  most 
esteemed  friends  still  called  so.  He  surely 
had  not  lost  all  aesthetic  sense,  but  he  hac^ 
truly  lost  the  aesthetic  field  of  his  youth, 
and  had  paid  the  price  for  what  he  had 
attained  in  narrower  fields. 

In  closing  this  chapter  I  would  call  atten- 
tion to  the  corroboration  of  this  view  which  is 
obtained  when  we  consider  that  it  enables  us 
to  understand  the  basis  of  the  principal  theo- 
ries that  have  been  presented  to  account  for 
the  nature  of  the  beautiful. 

Sensualistic  explanations  are  evidently  due 


50  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

to  an  emphasis  of  the  sensational  inception  of 
aesthetic  phenomena ;  to  the  forcible  presenta- 
tion of  the  fact  that  aesthetic  impression  is 
usually  largely  sensational  in  character ;  the 
exclusion  of  sensation  by  other  thinkers  being 
accounted  for  by  the  fact  that  the  so-called 
"lower"  sensations  are  so  emphatically  un- 
pleasant in  memory  for  those  whose  thought 
is  directed  to  ethical  considerations.  Emo- 
tional theories  have  their  genesis  in  the  every- 
day, careless  identification  of  pleasure-pain 
states  with  emotional  phenomena.  Intellect- 
ual theories  are  naturally  accounted  for  by 
the  fact  that  the  mental  life  of  deep  thinkers 
must,  in  its  very  nature,  be  largely  made  up 
of  rationalistic  data,  and  that  their  pleasure- 
fields  must  therefore  necessarily  tend  to 
the  emphasis  of  the  intellectual  aspect  if  the 
thinker  considers  the  relations  between  the 
elements  of  his  aesthetic  field :  if  he  take  an- 
other point  of  view  and  consider  especially  the 
nature  of  the  elements  of  his  aesthetic  life,  he 
is  likely  to  lay  stress  upon  the  importance 


THE   OBSEKVER's   STANDPOINT.  61 

of  the  imagination :  while  if  he  be  impressed 
with  the  importance  of  the  reflective  aspect, 
he  is  likely  to  lay  the  basis  of  his  doctrine 
in  contemplation. 

Formalistic  theories  are  based  upon  the 
grasp  of  the  fact  that  beauty  must  be  deter- 
mined by  some  quality  which  runs  through 
all  of  consciousness,  and  such  a  quality  we 
have  seen  pleasure  to  be.  Absolutism  and 
Universalism,  as  we  have  already  seen,  find 
their  explanation  in  the  relative  permanency 
of  the  aesthetic  pleasure,  and  ethical  and 
spiritualistic  theories  are  evidently  due  to 
strong  personal  bias  in  the  theorists  who  them- 
selves can  gain  no  revival  pleasures  in  regions 
that  are  not  emphatically  connected  with  what 
is  of  ethical  or  spiritual  import. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   artist's   standpoint. 

fj^fvH  The  Art  Instinct. 

In  the  first  chapter  we  noted  a  distinction 
between  the  nature  of  the  impression  made 
upon  the  observer  b;f  a  work  of  art  or  by  a 
beautiful  object  in  the  world  in  which  we  live, 
and  the  nature  of  the  impulse  that  leads  to 
the  production  of  an  artistic  result.  The  for- 
mer subject  we  have  been  considering  until 
this  time;  let  us  now  turn  our  thought  to 
the  latter.  This,  the  reader  will  note, 
involves  an  entire  change  of  standpoint. 
No  longer  shall  we  consider  Art  as  those 
do  who  are  impressed,  but  as  those  must 
who  produce  aesthetic  works;  that  is,  we 
now  undertake  the  study  of  aesthetics  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  artist  rather  than 
from  that   of  the   observer. 

62 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  53 

The  true  artist  is  driven  to  his  work  by 
an  overwhelming  impulse.  A  man  may,  of 
course,  deliberately  determine  upon  an  attempt 
to  express  himself  aesthetically  in  some  man- 
ner, to  be  an  architect  say,  or  a  writer  of 
verses,  but  this  does  not  constitute  him  an 
artist,  however  much  he  may  attain  of  skill 
in  the  profession  he  chooses.  He  shows 
himself  a  true  artist  when  he  appears  com- 
pelled to  the  production  of  his  art  expression 
by  an  impulse  that  seems  often  to  come  from 
without  himself,  —  to  be  a  voice  calling  him, 
a  muse  inciting  him. 

Genius  is  distinctly  instinctive.  The  true 
artist  has  a  spark  at  least  of  the  fire  of 
the  genius,  and  for  that  reason  must  depend 
upon  his  instincts,  must  be  led  by  his  im- 
pulses. Intellectual  work  and  reasoned-out 
processes  may  be  his  tools,  but  they  cannot 
take  the  place  of  the  racial  leadings  which 
command  his  action  in  ways  unknown  and 
unexpected. 

We  all  recognize  that  the  genius  is  espe- 


64  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

cially  subject  to  hallucinations  as  the  result 
of  the  reflective  absorption  which  precedes 
his  activities.  He  is  liable  to  see  visions 
and  to  hear  voices  that  appear  to  be  real  for 
him,  although  none  of  his  companions  hears 
or  sees  as  he  does.  These  hallucinations 
are  most  marked  in  the  case  of  the  ethical 
genius,  —  the  prophet ;  but  that  they  are  not 
unknown  to  the  artistic  genius  is  apparent 
from  the  legends  of  the  muse  that  speaks  to 
the  poet,  and  of  the  vision  that  appears  to 
the  sculptor.  It  is  said  of  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes,  who  has  given  to  the  world  the 
magnificent  decoration  of  the  large  hall  in 
the  Sorbonne  in  Paris,  that  before  he  began 
his  work  he  spent  days  amidst  the  scaffold- 
ings, merely  contemplating  the  wall  surface 
he  was  to  work  upon ;  and  he  tells  his  friends 
that  before  he  touched  his  brush  he  saw 
clearly  before  him  the  decoration,  exactly  as 
we  see  it  on  the  wall  to-day.  This  vision 
was  certainly  not  far  from  what  a  specialist 
\^       in  nervous  diseases  would  call  ^n  hallucina- 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  55 

tion,  and  with  such  examples  in  our  midst 
it  is  not  surprising  that  the  artists  should 
still  cling  to  the  notion  of  inspiration  from 
without  themselves. 

If  we  turn,  however,  from  the  poetical  con- 
ception of  this  inspiration  from  without,  and, 
taking  a  more  scientific  point  of  view,  con- 
sider the  subject  of  the  impulse  which  guides 
the  artist,  it  will  seem  worth  while  to 
endeavour  to  relate  this  "art  impulse"  to 
the  other  prominent  impulses  by  which  we 
are  from  time  to  time  swayed. 

To  those  who  accept  the  probability  of  a 
developmental  genesis  in  our  race  under  the 
laws  of  control  and  survival,  it  will  not  seem 
surprising  if  our  life-history  show  the  gradual 
dawning  and  growth  of  certain  co-ordinated 
instinctive  reactions  of  the  whole  system, 
tending  to  the  advantage  and  protection  of 
the  individual  organism,  and  hence  to  the 
preservation  of  the  race  to  which  this  indi- 
vidual belongs.     We  should  be  led  to  expect 


56  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

to  find,  still  existing  in  ourselves,  some  gen- 
eral correlated  systematic  reactions  such  as 
were  common  amongst  those  of  our  progeni- 
tors, whose  life  was  almost  passive  as  related 
to  its  environment,  in  so  far  as  these  reac- 
tions still  remain  of  positive  value,  or  with- 
out disadvantage  to  us  or  to  our  race.  "We 
should  expect,  for  instance,  to  experience  (a)  a 
wide  instinctive  reaction  determined  by  the 
approach  of  an  object,  which  has,  in  the  past, 
been  advantageous  to  the  individual  of  the 
race,  although  it  may  not  be  known  to  the 
individual  to  be  so;  a  condition  of  receptive 
expansiveness  with  reference  to  this  ap- 
proaching object.  We  should  look  (&)  for  a 
quite  different,  but  equally  wide,  instinctive 
reaction  arising  upon  the  approach  of  an 
object  which,  in  the  past,  has  been  disadvan- 
tageous ;  a  condition  of  general  contraction 
or  shrinking,  as  it  were.  We  should  expect 
to  find  other  corresponding  mental  phases 
differing  in  quality  and  elemental  width, 
which  would  appear  (c)  upon  the  departure  of 


THE   artist's    standpoint.  57 

the  advantageous  and  {d)  upon  the  departure 
of  the  disadvantageous.  We  should  expect 
to  find  these  reactions  emphasized  in  our  race, 
because  it  is  clear  that  a  race  which  did  thus 
react  immediately,  in  the  manner  and  under 
the  conditions  named,  would  certainly  have  an 
advantage  in  the  struggle  for  existence  and 
would  persist  when  other  races  without  such 
capacity  to  react  would  be  obliterated.  Now 
if  it  be  argued  that  there  is  a  coincidence  be- 
tween nervous  activities  and  mental  changes, 
we  should  surely  expect  that,  in  connection 
with  these  more  or  less  definitely  co-ordinated 
instinctive  activities,  corresponding  complex 
mental  states  would  appear,  and  these  for 
convenience  we  may  call  "  instinct  feelings." 
We  should  therefore  expect  to  find  an 
"  instinct  feeling  "  — 

A.  arising  upon  tlie  approach  of  the  advantageous; 

another 

B.  appearing  upon  the  approach  of  the  disojdvantOr 

geous;  another 

C.  upon  the  departure  of  the  advantageous;  and  still 

another 

D.  upon  the  departure  of  the  disadvantageous. 


58  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  do  find  cer- 
tain complex  mental  states  belonging  to  the 
class  which  we  call  the  "emotions,"  that 
arise  spontaneously  and  almost  reflexly,  and 
apart  from  any  influence  of  our  reason  or 
will,  and  which  correspond  to  the  conditions 
above  mentioned. 

A.  Joy,  arising  upon  the  approach  of  the  advantageous. 

B.  Dread,  arising  upon  the  approach  of  the  disadvan- 

tageous. 

C.  Sorrow,  arising  upon  the  departure  of  the  advan- 

tageous. 

D.  Relief,  arising  upon  the  departure  of  the  disad- 

vantageous. 

If  we  follow  out  the  same  argument  in 
relation  to  our  less  passive  life,  we  shall  be 
led  to  a  fuller  comprehension  of  the  nature 
of  the  emotions  as  a  whole.  I  shall  not  ask 
my  reader  to  enter  into  the  details  of  a  psy- 
chologic argument  to  prove  my  case  here,  but 
shall  merely  ask  him  to  note  that  of  the  more 
varied  emotions  we  find  — 

E.  Love,  which  is  connected  with  a  tendency  to  go 

out  toward  an  advantageous  object,  in  receptive 
moodj 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  59 

F.  Fear,  which  is  connected  with  a  tendency  to  flee 

from  a  disadvantageous  object ; 

G.  Anger,  which  is  connected  with  a  tendency  to  act 

to  drive  away  a  disadvantageous  object ; 

and  we  might  also  expect  to  find  — 

H.  An  emotion  connected  with  a  tendency  to  act  in 
such  a  way  as  would  attract  advantageous  ob- 
jects to  us ; 

for  otherwise  there  is  evidently  a  lack  of  sym- 
metry in  our  scheme. 

But  in  fact  we  find  no  emotion  H  such  as 
seems  necessary  to  complete  this  symmetry. 
This  fact  may  be  accounted  for  by  supposing 
that  this  instinct  to-act-to-attract,  if  it  exist, 
may  be  one  which  does  not  lead  to  any  imme- 
diate reactive  spasm,  so  to  speak;  and  that 
the  reactionary  effects,  and  the  consciousness 
corresponding  thereto,  would  therefore  be  slow 
to  appear;  and  further,  by  supposing  that 
these  acts  brought  about  by  this  instinct  may 
be  so  varied  that  no  fixed  mental  elements 
would  result  from  the  instinctive  reaction; 
for  with  the  Emotions  A,  B,  C,  D,  E,  F,  and 


60  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

G-,  just  considered,  this  immediacy  of  reac- 
tion, and  a  certain  stability  of  the  elements 
involved  in  each  successive  reaction,  must  be 
supposed  to  determine  the  attention  to,  and 
the  definiteness  and  fixity  of,  the  "instinct 
feelings";  without  this  definiteness  and  fix- 
ity we  could  not  expect  them  to  have  gained 
emotional  names.  For  the  attachment  of 
names  is  a  very  late  step  in  our  racial  life, 
whilst  the  instinctive  reactions  under  con- 
sideration are  determined  by  the  experiences 
of  untold  generations  of  our  ancestry  before 
even  the  semblance  of  man's  form  had 
appeared. 

That  this  supposition  is  not  unreasonable 
appears  upon  considering  the  case  of  the 
well-recognized  "imitation  instincts,"  which 
must  have  corresponding  "instinct  feelings"  ; 
but  if  our  argument  be  true,  we  should  not 
expect  to  find  emotional  names  attached  to 
these  latter,  for  the  reason  that  the  reactions 
involved  are  not  immediate,  nor  of  a  defi- 
nite fixed  nature.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  we 


THE   artist's   standpoint.  61 

* 

have  no  emotional  state  corresponding  with 
the  imitative  activities,  although  the  "imi- 
tation instinct"  is  recognized  by  all  to  be 
of  fundamental  value  to  us. 

We  have  now  reached  a  point  of  inquiry 
which  seems,  perhaps,  far  enough  away  from 
the  subject  of  our  chapter,  but  which  I  think 
will  almost  immediately  show  itself  to  be  of 
importance  and  of  very  direct  bearing  upon 
the  subject  of  our  thought.  What  we  are 
now  led  to  ask  is  this :  whether  there  be 
any  impulses  within  us  that  lead  us,  blind  as 
to  the  end  in  view,  to  undertake  activities 
that  will  result  in  the  attraction  of  advan- 
tageous objects  to  us. 

If  there  be  such  impulses,  we  should  expect 
to  find  in  the  first  place  tendencies  to  actions 
which  would  merely  result  in  the  attraction 
of  attention  to  the  individual ;  and  such  ten- 
dencies, recognized  in  marked  degree  amongst 
the  higher  animals,  are  clearly  found  in  the 
human  race  in  its  barbaric  state ;  nor  can  they 
be  said  to  be  totally  lacking  in  the  human 


62  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

species  of  higher  types  in  our  day.  Prof. 
J.  Mark  Baldwin  suggests  that  we  call  these 
activities  the  "  self -exhibiting  reactions." 

Secondly,  we  should  expect  to  find  tenden- 
cies to  produce  objects  or  objective  conditions 
which  should  attract  by  pleasing;  and  thirdly, 
we  should  look  for  tendencies  to  act  to  attract 
by  the  production  of  results  useful  to  the  one 
whose  attraction  is  desirable. 

The  third  class  of  tendencies  is  easily  iden- 
tifiable with  those  impulses  to  disinterested 
benevolence  which  are  so  prominent  in  mod- 
em life,  and  it  may  be  noted  here  that  neither 
the  first  nor  this  third  class  of  instinctive 
tendencies  result  in  immediate  or  definite  re- 
actions such  as  would  lead  us  to  expect  the  at- 
tachment of  emotional  names  to  their  psychic 
counterparts. 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  second  class  ?  Is 
there  any  widespread,  instinctive  tendency 
within  us  which,  with  no  knowledge  on  our 
part  of  the  end  in  view,  still  does  work  for 
results  which  shall  please  others,  and  which 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  63 

has  no  other  raison  d'Ure  than  this  pleasure- 
giving;  an  instinctive  tendency  so  slow  in 
its  reactionary  development,  and  resulting  in 
activities  of  so  varied  a  nature,  that  no  emo- 
tional name  should  be  expected  to  attach  to 
the  reaction  ? 

I  think  we  have  it  in  the  blind  instinct  to 
produce  art  works ;  in  what  is  usually  called 
the  "Art  Impulse,"  but  which  I  shall  speak 
of  generally  in  what  follows  as  the  "  Art  In- 
stinct." The  Art  Instinct  certainly  is  blind 
to  any  end  in  view  except  the  expression  of 
the  ideals  which  are  present  to  the  artist's 
mind.  It  none  the  less  does  have  the  effect 
of  producing  objects  which  delight  and  which 
attract  by  pleasing ;  moreover,  it  certainly  has 
in  this  a  most  valuable  function,  and  apart 
from  this  no  evident  raison  d'etre.  Further- 
more, the  impulse  works  itself  out  through 
slow  and  diverse  processes  which  in  their 
nature  could  not  bring  distinct  and  immediate 
reactions  such  as  are  necessary  where  emo- 
tional names  are  to  become  fixed. 


64  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

Now  I  think  my  reader  will  see  the  drift 
of  this  long  and  perhaps  difficult  discussion, 
for  it  appears  that  our  consideration  of  the 
subject  from  the  artist's  standpoint  has 
brought  us  to  the  same  conclusion  that  we 
reached,  when  in  the  first  chapter  we  con- 
sidered it  from  the  standpoint  of  the  ob- 
server; namely,  that  pleasure-getting  and 
pleasure-giving  are  of  the  very  essence  of 
aesthetic  phenomena,  and  that  we  should, 
therefore,  treat  the  science  of  aesthetics  fun- 
damentally as  a  branch  of  the  science  of 
pleasure. 

A  discussion  of  this  relation  will  appear 
in  the  later  chapters.  I  wish  now  to  con- 
sider some  points  of  interest  in  connection 
with  the  art  instinct  as  here  conceived. 

1.  As  far  back  as  the  time  of  the  Greek 
Stoics,  we  find  the  art  instinct  spoken  of  as 
a  development  of  the  play  instinct,  and  in 
later  days  Kant  and  Schiller  and  Herbert 
Spencer  have  emphasized  this  view.  What, 
indeed,  could  be  more  natural  than  that  such 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  66 

an  opinion  should  take  hold  of  men,  when  we 
consider  that  it  is  only  during  our  leisure 
moments,  which  are  our  play  times,  that  we 
are  able  to  look  for  the  delights  of  beauty. 

When  one  comes  to  consider  play  in  its 
essence,  however,  he  finds  many  difficulties 
connected  with  the  doctrine  that  the  art  in- 
stincts are  determined  by  the  play  instincts. 
It  is,  of  course,  well  enough  with  Kant  and 
Schiller  to  note  and  emphasize  the  bond 
between  the  two,  viz.,  that  both  arise  without 
definite  known  aims,  with  no  evident  human 
interests  at  stake ;  but  when  we  look  a  little 
deeper  we  find  that  by  play  activities  we 
mean  those  activities,  usually  thought  of  as 
"spontaneous,"  which,  having  no  evident 
objective  reference,  have  apparently  no  other 
function  than  the  using  up  of  accumulated 
energy ;  and  upon  a  little  further  considera- 
tion it  becomes  clear  that  the  simple  "  spon- 
taneous" activities  tending  to  the  use  of 
accumulated  energy  must  have  formed  the 
starting-point  of  all  developments  of  complex 


6^  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

activities,  -which  were  to  subserve  valuable 
ends  in  our  more  complicated  life.  The 
simple  animal  which  was  just  able  to  meet 
the  requirements  of  its  environment  would 
offer  little  or  no  field  for  developmental 
forces  to  work  upon;  but  with  the  rise 
of  spontaneous  activity  in  some  given  direc- 
tion, we  have  some  chance  of  gain  or  loss 
to  the  individual  which  might  determine 
survival  or  be  the  beginning  of  competition, 
and  the  basis  of  emphasis  of  special  activities 
which  would  eventually  turn  out  to  be  of 
value  to  the  race.  Without  these  simple 
"fortuitous"  actions,  so  far  as  I  can  see, 
there  would  be  no  basis  for  the  strengthening 
of  special  co-ordinations  of  activity  by  elimi- 
nation or  contest,  survival  or  heredity. 

I  think,  therefore,  that  we  must  hold  that 
from  this  simple  instinct  to  use  accumulated 
energy,  —  this  so-called  "play  instinct,"  — 
we  must  derive  all  those  instinctive  activi- 
ties which  we  have  considered  in  the  first 
part  of  this   chapter,   e.g.,  love,  anger,  the 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  67 

imitation  instinct,  the  instincts  leading  us 
to  do  what  is  known  to  be  useful,  and  also, 
but  with  no  special  dependence,  the  impulse 
to  do  blindly  what  shall  attract  by  pleasing, 
viz.,  the  "art  instinct."  It  is  apparent, 
therefore,  if  this  argument  be  sound,  that  it 
does  not  suffice  in  considering  the  genesis  of 
the  art  instinct  to  look  upon  it  as  a  devel- 
opment of  play,  but  that  some  other  expla- 
nation of  its  genesis  is  necessary,  and  such 
an  explanation  we  have  just  been  considering. 
2.  I  wish  to  ask  my  reader  to  emphasize 
in  his  mind  the  fact  that  all  the  "instinct 
feelings"  above  described  are  altogether 
blind  as  to  their  end.  We  love  and  hate 
and  fear  spontaneously,  and  without  any 
notion  whatever  that  we  are  doing  what 
nature  calls  us  to  do  for  the  protection  of 
the  individual  and  race ;  and  if  the  relation- 
ship exist  between  the  art  instinct  and  the 
emotions  which  I  have  sketched  out,  then 
we  should  find  the  art  instinct  impelling 
the  man  to  his  work  without  any  apprecia- 


68  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

tion  whatever  that  he  is  really  aiming  to  do 
what  shall  attract  others  to  him.  In  other 
words,  the  art  instinct  under  this  view  of 
ours  is  totally  unselfish. 

If  this  doctrine  of  ours  taught  that  the 
artist  works  consciously  for  the  pleasure  he  is 
to  give,  and  which  he  sees  will  pay  him  in 
one  coin  or  another,  truly  this  would  be  false 
to  the  facts  and  would  take  the  glory  out  of  all 
art  effort.  But  no  such  position  is  involved  in 
the  theory;  for  the  true  artist,  in  so  far  as 
he  is  an  artist,  has  no  end  in  view  except 
the  working  out  of  his  impulse  to  produce. 
So  far  as  he  learns  to  calculate  and  to  mould 
his  work  in  order  that  he  may  bring  nearer 
a  preconceived  benefit  to  himself,  so  far  is  he 
led  by  other  than  the  true  art  instinct;  so 
far  does  he  crush  down  his  "inspiration," 
i.e.,  the  inborn  tendency  to  produce  aesthetic 
results,  which,  indeed,  will  bring  pleasure  to 
his  admirers  who  are  thus  attracted  to  him, 
but  this  without  any  preconception  of  their 
value  in  this  respect  by  the  artist  himself. 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  69 

The  art  instinct  is  blind  in  its  simplicity, 
witli  no  end  in  view  at  all  beyond  the  com- 
pletion of  its  work.  In  proportion  as  ulte- 
rior determinate  ends  become  fixed,  the  fire 
of  artistic  genius  is  dimmed,  although  the 
nobility  of  the  man's  work  may  perchance 
be  heightened  by  the  intrinsic  nobility  of  his 
aim  beyond  the  line  of  his  art. 

3.  I  would  emphasize  in  the  third  place 
the  fact,  implied  in  the  considerations  above, 
that  the  instinct  which  leads  to  artistic  work 
is  a  common  heritage  of  man,  as  completely 
racial  as  are  the  more  distinct  "instinct  feel- 
ings," e.g.,  the  emotions  of  joy  and  sorrow, 
love  and  anger  and  fear.  We  find  men, 
indeed,  of  whom  we  say  that  they  have  never 
known  sorrow,  others  who  seem  to  be  inca- 
pable of  love,  for  instance;  but  very  evi- 
dently we  speak  relatively  in  such  cases; 
we  do  not  for  a  moment  lose  sight  of  the 
fact  that  sorrow  and  love  are  emotions 
common  to  all  of  our  race.  And  so  it  is 
with  the  art  instinct:    there  are  those  who 


70  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

upon  a  superficial  view  seem  to  be  devoid 
of  all  appreciative  or  productive  capacity  in 
aBsthetic  lines,  but  for  all  that  I  think  it 
must  be  granted  that  the  aesthetic  "  faculty," 
if  we  may  so  speak,  is  a  clearly  defined  racial 
possession,  and  is  present  to  some  small 
extent  even  in  such  a  man  as  we  have 
been  describing. 

The  savage  and  the  child  equally  tend  to 
use  up  their  surplus  vigour  in  crude  attempts 
to  produce  works  such  as,  in  their  developed 
form,  give  us  our  best  art  products.  Almost 
every  adult  feels  some  tendency  to  write 
verses,  or  to  compose  melodies,  or  to  dab- 
ble with  brush  and  palette,  modelling-tool 
or  draughtsmen's  pencil.  But,  strangely,  we 
find  a  notion  prevalent  amongst  us  that  the 
existence  of  the  art  instinct  in  the  young  in 
any  noticeable  degree  is  a  clear  leading,  and 
that  the  one  who  thus  feels  this  instinct  is 
especially  "called"  to  devote  his  or  her  life 
to  the  production  of  art  works;  and  yet 
who  would  think,  because  he  discovered  in 


THE   artist's   standpoint.  71 

his  boy  certain  marked  pugnacious  tenden- 
cies, that  the  boy  was  "  called "  to  the  pro- 
fession of  a  soldier,  with  a  large  chance  that 
he  would  develop  into  a  Napoleon  ? 

We  must  remember  that  certain  impulses 
that  develop  in  childhood  disappear  entirely 
in  after  life,  this  probably  being  due  to  our 
individual  growth  by  steps  through  forms 
that  have  belonged  to  our  ancestors  in  the 
dim  past.  Capacities  that  appear  to  give 
promise  in  childhood  may,  therefore,  be  lost 
before  the  adult  age.  The  presence  of  im- 
pulses in  the  young  is,  therefore,  no  sure 
guide  as  to  the  capacities  they  will  develop 
in  later  years.  Adult  age,  with  its  experi- 
ence, must  be  reached  before  the  man  can 
become  so  especially  skilful  that  he  will 
stand  apart  from  his  fellows  as  one  of  tal- 
ent ;  and  this  is  true  in  all  vocations  of  life. 

It  seems  clear  then  that  no  one  should 
feel  that  he  is  "called"  to  devote  his  life 
to  aesthetic  production,  in  the  face  of  the 
knowledge  that  the  life  will  be  one  of  pri- 


72  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

vation  and  pain,  unless  his  artistic  leading 
is  overwhelming  in  its  power.  Those  of  mod- 
erate talent  can  always  find  means  of  gain- 
ing a  livelihood  in  the  production  directly  or 
indirectly  of  what  is  of  use  to  their  fellows. 
Artistic  work  is  essentially  luxurious;  it  is 
demanded  after  the  needs  of  man  are  satis- 
fied, and  therefore  only  that  which  highly 
attracts  can  be  expected  to  "pay."  The 
man  who  has  not  great  endowments  as  an 
artist,  although  he  may  have  acute  percep- 
tions and  high  standards,  cannot  hope  to 
succeed  in  making  a  living  out  of  art  work 
of  high  quality,  and  if  this  view  of  ours  be 
correct,  there  is  no  reason  whatever  why  he 
should  deem  that  he  is  called  upon  to  devote 
himself  to  the  production  of  what  must  be 
inferior  aesthetic  works,  merely  because  he 
feels  this  "art  impulse"  within  him.  Far 
better  were  it  for  him  to  guide  his  energies 
in  directions  which  would  lead  to  greater  use- 
fulness to  the  world  at  large,  and  in  which 
at  the  same  time  there  would  be  less  of  pain 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  73 

for  himself  and  less  of  pain  for  the  sympa- 
thetic public,  who  dislike  to  see  the  poor 
artist  suffer  as  much  as  he  dislikes  the 
process  himself.  Were  these  facts  given 
their  full  weight,  many  would  hesitate,  as 
they  do  not  now,  before  undertaking  art 
work  as  a  vocation. 

In  bringing  to  a  close  our  consideration 
from  the  artist's  standpoint,  we  must  touch 
to  some  extent  upon  the  subject  of  our  next 
chapter,  in  which  we  are  to  discuss  the  stand- 
point of  the  critic ;  for  it  is  apparent  that  the 
artist  must  alternate  between  the  attitude  of 
the  producer  and  that  of  the  observer,  and  if 
he  is  to  become  an  effective  worker  must  be 
his  own  sternest  critic. 

Critical  ability  is  connected  with  an  ana- 
lytic habit  of  mind,  with  a  technical  and 
theoretic  knowledge,  with  a  comprehension 
of  the  aims  and  ends  of  artistic  endeavour, 
all  of  which  are  not  uncommonly  thought 
to   be  incompatible  with    the   artistic   tem- 


74  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

perament.  The  moments  of  production  are 
indeed  moments  of  guidance  by  instinct,  as 
we  have  seen ;  but  that  this  abandon  to  the 
guidance  of  the  art  instinct  stands  in  no 
way  opposed  to  the  analytic  life  of  thought 
is  clear,  when  we  consider  that  all  artists  do, 
to  some  degree,  throw  themselves  into  the 
frame  of  mind  which  is  tjrpical  of  scientific 
attainment  in  their  study  of  technical  meth- 
ods, and  in  their  consideration  of  the  results 
they  wish  to  reach.  They  must  study  to 
some  extent ;  they  must  learn  the  rudiments, 
for  instance,  of  perspective  or  of  rhyme  and 
metre,  or  of  harmony  and  counterpoint ;  they 
must  become  skilled  in  analysis  of  their  fail- 
ures; so  that  any  thorough-going  statement 
of  an  opposition  between  the  critical  and  pro- 
ductive attitudes  suggests  its  own  reductio  ad 
absurdum. 

The  most  that  can  be  said  is  that  the 
failure  to  combine  in  a  high  degree  the  two 
mental  attitudes  in  one  person  is  a  matter 
of  capacity,  and  that  such  capacity  is  n.ot 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  75 

often  found.  The  more  of  a  scientist  and 
critic  the  artist  can  become  without  losing 
the  predominant  habit  of  mind  which  leads 
him  to  he  guided  by  his  art  instinct,  the 
greater  will  he  be  as  an  artist.  The  exist- 
ence of  such  men  as  Goethe  and  Leonardo  da 
Vinci,  who  were  esteemed  as  eminent  scien- 
tists, and  who  have  made  for  themselves 
enduring  fame  as  artists,  shows  clearly  that, 
where  capacity  is  great,  results  of  importance 
may  be  obtained  by  the  same  person  in  both 
directions. 

I  think,  therefore,  that  the  development  of 
all  that  goes  to  make  a  man  analytical  and 
scientific  should  be  encouraged  in  the  educa- 
tion of  an  artist :  a  man  whose  genius  is 
artistic  will  never  be  led  away  by  scien- 
tific concentration.  If  a  student  be  thus 
led  away,  then  surely  it  is  evident  that 
his  talent,  is  scientific  and  not  artistic ;  and 
as  surely  the  world  will  be  a  gainer  in  the 
sequel.  Artists  of  very  mediocre  talent 
abound  and  multiply;  it  certainly  would  be 


76  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

well  if  some  of  them  were  brought  to  see 
that  they  can  do  more  effective  service  for 
the  world  and  for  art  by  devoting  their  ener- 
gies to  artistic  investigation  rather  than  to 
artistic  production. 

In  my  view,  when  the  descendants  of  our 
race  shall  look  back  at  the  times  in  which 
we  live,  they  will  see  some  great  aesthetic 
movement  which  we  ourselves,  perhaps,  do 
not  recognize,  and  will  find  some  masters  of 
aesthetic  genius  who  will  be  seen  to  have  had 
the  force,  as  Shakespeare  had  in  his  day,  to 
take  hold  of  the  main  lines  of  the  complex 
developments  of  our  time,  with  all  its  new- 
born introspection  and  consciousness  of  aim, 
and  who  will  appear,  notwithstanding  all  this 
width  of  view,  to  have  been  willing  to  listen 
to  the  instinctive  leadings  within  them  which 
compel  to  noble  art-expression.  Artists  they 
will  be  of  noble  mien,  who  can  treat  the 
burdensome  complexities  of  our  life  as  mere 
media  of  expression ;  and  their  work  shall 
surely  enlighten  the  path  of  all  those  who, 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  77 

lost  in  the  perplexity  of  this  busy  life,  have 
failed  to  grasp  the  fulness  of  its  meaning. 

There  is  a  danger  to  the  artist  much  more 
subtle  than  that  of  loss  of  the  art  impulse 
through  serious  study.  I  refer  to  the  loss 
of  interest  in  the  end  to  be  attained,  in  con- 
sequence of  concentration  of  thought  upon 
the  means  adopted  to  reach  this  end;  and 
it  is  evident  that  a  knowledge  of  the  science 
and  of  the  philosophy  of  art  in  its  fullest 
and  widest  sense  will  be  a  great  aid  in  over- 
coming this  danger.  That  this  danger  is 
real,  and  that  much  aesthetic  endeavour  fails 
on  this  account  to  produce  aesthetic  result, 
will,  I  think,  appear  upon  the  most  cursory 
view. 

This  danger,  indeed,  is  one  into  which 
workers  in  all  fields  tend  to  fall.  All  men 
are  liable  to  become  absorbed  by  their  interest 
in  the  intricate  machinery  which  they  them- 
selves have  started  in  order  to  attain  a  cer- 
tain end,  and  are  thus  led  to  forget  the  end 


78  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

itself.  In  legislative  life,  the  ordinary  poli- 
tician, even  when  he  is  not  a  self-seeker, 
fails  to  grasp  more  than  the  mere  processes 
of  enactment  of  the  laws  which  are  brought 
forward  for  consideration;  in  business  life, 
the  man  is  rare  who  is  able  to  see  beyond 
his  immediate  transactions;  and  the  artist 
presents  no  exception  to  this  rule. 

The  average  musical  virtuoso  forgets  his 
musical  art  entirely  in  his  anxiety  to  per- 
fect his  technical  skill.  Orchestral  leaders 
lose  the  very  thought  of  the  composer,  take 
all  "the  soul"  out  of  the  music,  in  their 
attempts  to  produce  accuracy  in  tempo, 
and  perfection  of  special  instrumentation. 
The  painter  is  particularly  liable  to  become 
absorbed  in  the  search  for  some  special  ele- 
ment, the  "values"  perhaps,  forgetful  of 
composition  or  drawing  or  of  other  elements 
which  are  needful  for  the  full  perfection  of 
his  work.  Architects  are  liable  to  forget  all 
but  the  qualities  of  their  drawings,  of  their 
compositions  upon  flat  surfaces ;  oblivious  of 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  79 

the  fact  that  these  drawings  are  merely 
instruments  to  the  production  of  composi- 
tions in  the  solid.  They  draw  in  black  and 
white  with  pen  and  pencil,  and  thus  come  to 
think  in  lines  which  can  never  be  produced 
in  their  buildings,  losing  all  sense  of  the  pro- 
portions of  the  colour  masses,  which  alone 
can  make  a  building  permanently  beautiful. 
The  great  artists,  indeed,  are  those  who 
do  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  technique 
is  but  the  tool  by  means  of  which  they  are 
enabled  to  express  those  special  conceptions 
which  come  to  them  like  inspirations,  and 
which,  when  thus  expressed,  produce  that 
permanency  of  pleasure  which  we  call  an 
effect  of  beauty. 

I  shall  ask  your  attention  for  a  moment, 
in  closing,  to  what  I  consider  the  most  im- 
portant subject  touched  upon  in  this  chapter, 
and  perhaps  in  the  whole  book. 

In  all  that  has  preceded  this,  we  have 
been  considering  -Esthetics  from  an  individ- 


80  -ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

ualistic  point  of  view.  In  the  first  chapter 
we  treated  of  the  observer's  standpoint,  the 
mental  states  of  the  individual  as  impressed. 
In  this  chapter,  in  which,  thus  far,  we  have 
been  considering  the  artist's  standpoint,  our 
thought  also  has  been  individualistic;  has 
dealt  with  the  nature  of  the  impulse  that 
guides  the  individual  artist. 

But  the  thought  that  has  developed  itself 
enables  us  now  to  take  a  wider  than  indi- 
vidualistic position.  Modern  psychology,  it 
seems  to  me,  has  here  a  distinct  message  to 
give  to  the  students  of  the  philosophy  of 
art,  as  this  latter  is  a  branch  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  life.  The  question  which  it  raises 
and  answers  relates  to  the  function  of  the 
art  instinct  in  the  developmentof_ourrace. 

The  doctrine  of  development  teaches  us 
that  if  an  instinct  is  deep  seated  in  the  in- 
dividual, it  is  almost  certainly  because  it  has 
been  of  service  to  individuals  as  members  of 
the  race.  The  art  instinct  is  evidently  very 
deep  seated  within  us,  and  has  become  elabo- 


THE   artist's   standpoint.  81 

rated  to  a  high  degree ;  and  it  is  exceedingly 
improbable  that  this  would  have  occurred 
unless,  in  the  following  of  this  instinct, 
mankind  had  been  subserving  some  valuable 
racial  end. 

In  the  scheme  presented  above,  the  reader 
will  notice  that  so  far  as  the  question  of 
function  is  concerned,  the  "self-exhibiting" 
reactions,  the  benevolent  impulses,  and  the 
art  instincts  are  all  to  be  referred  to  the 
instinct  to  act  to  attract,  spoken  of  under 
H  above. 

As  we  have  no  occasion  here  to  discuss 
the  "  self -exhibiting  reactions"  nor  the  be- 
nevolent impulses,  I  shall  speak  only  of  the 
art  instinct  in  what  follows. 

I  think  it  is  apparent,  if  my  argument 
hold,  that  we  now  pass  away  from  indi- 
vidualistic considerations.  We  find  that 
the  art  instinct  deals  with  the  attraction 
of  others  to  ourselves,  unconsciously  indeed, 
but  none  the  less  certainly  for  all  that;  in 
fact,  it  deals  with  the  overthrow  of  isolation 


$2  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

and  with  the  growth  of  sociality  and  ajm- 
pathy.  And,  although  I  cannot  agree  with 
Guyau  that  the  production  of  sympathy 
towards  life  is  the  end  of  artistic  endeavour, 
I  think  we  may  surely  say  that  the  func- 
tion of  art  in  the  development  of  man  is  social 
consolidation} 

Now,  I  beg  to  ask  you  whether  this  is  not 
a  noble  and  ennobling  conception  of  Art? 
Is  it  not  nobler  than  that  individualistic 
view  which  for  so  long  has  taught  us  that 
as  observers  of  aesthetic  results  the  final 
end  of  our  activities  is  to  obtain  per- 
sonal delight;  delight  to  be  sure  of  a  spe- 
cially refined  and  so-called  higher  type,  but 
personal  delight  for  all  that.  We  see  in 
this  view  of  ours  a  higher  than  individual 
significance  in  the  emphasis  of  social  sym- 
pathies. 

1  Since  this  was  written  lias  appeared  E.  Grosse's  Die 
Anfange  d.  Kunst,  in  wliich  the  author,  approaching  the  subject 
from  an  entirely  diverse  standpoint,  has  been  led  to  what  is 
practically  this  same  view.  In  the  words  of  the  reviewer  in 
Mind  (Nov.  '94),  he  claims  to  show  that  the  function  of  Art 
"is  the  strengthening  and  extension  of  social  cohesion." 


THE  artist's  standpoint.  83 

And  taking  our  view  from  the  artist's 
standpoint,  is  not  this  conception  also  a 
nobler  one  than  the  oft-repeated  doctrine  of 
individualistic  values  which  in  our  day  finds 
its  best  statement  in  the  doctrine  that  the 
aesthetic  end  is  "  expression  for  expression's 
sake"?  Is  it  not  nobler,  I  ask,  to  conceive 
that  the  artist,  whUe  thus  expressing  his 
ii^stinctive  leadings,  is  at  the  same  time  the 
unconscious  servant  of  Nature  in  her  efforts 
towards  social  consolidation? 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   critic's   standpoint. 

Concerning  JEsthetic  Standards. 

In  the  chapter  which  has  preceded  this  we 
have  been  considering  Fine  Art ;  that  broad 
field  of  the  still  broader  field  of  Esthetics 
which  is  brought  into  being  by  the  creative 
impulses  of  man;  in  other  words,  we  there 
considered  Esthetics  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  artist.  In  this  chapter  we  are  to  turn 
again  to  the  standpoint  of  the  observer  which 
we  discussed  in  the  first  chapter,  but  with 
this  difference,  that  then  we  considered  the 
observer  merely  as  impressed  by  beauty, 
while  now  we  are  to  deal  with  him  as  one 
who  judges ;  in  other  words,  we  are  now  to 
study  aesthetic  phenomena  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  critic. 

84 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  86 

Beyond  the  consideration  of  his  impres- 
sions as  an  observer,  the  critic  undertakes 
to  become  an  arbiter  as  to  the  worth  and 
the  validity  of  standards.  To  the  question 
of  the  nature  of  aesthetic  standards,  there- 
fore, must  we  from  the  outset  give  our 
attention  in  this  chapter. 

We  have  seen  that  consideration  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  observer,  and  also  from 
that  of  the  producer,  of  beauty,  leads  to  the 
view  that  pleasure-getting  and  pleasure-giv- 
ing are  of  fundamental  moment  to  aesthetic 
theory;  and  in  taking  up  this  new  point  of 
view,  our  first  thought  must  therefore  be 
given  to  the  relation  which  exists  between 
pleasure  and  the  nature  of  aesthetic  stand- 
ards. 

We  have  seen  that  from  the  field  of 
aesthetic  impression  we  are  able  to  exclude 
no  pleasure,  whatever  be  its  character,  unless 
it  bring  with  it  at  the  time  an  overbalance 
of  pain.  Any  pleasure  that  can  in  any  way 
be  brought  into  connection  with  other  pleas- 


86  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

ures  to  the  formation  of  a  pleasurable  com- 
plex state,  so  that  the  several  elements  form 
parts  of  a  whole,  or  so  that  one  follows  the 
others  in  an  associative  train,  by  this  fact  be- 
comes part  of  the  field  of  aesthetic  impression. 

But  with  the  field  of  aesthetic  judgment 
the  case  is  quite  different.  The  field  of 
aesthetic  impression  will  include  as  part  and 
parcel  of  its  totality  many  impressions  that 
are  pleasant  in  themselves,  but  that  are  not 
pleasant  in  revival,  and  which  on  this  very 
account  will  be  excluded  from  the  field  of 
aesthetic  judgment  which  is  determined  by 
the  pleasant  nature  of  remembrances. 

The  ephemeral  nature  of  pleasure,  and  the 
variation  that  this  implies  in  the  character 
of  the  revivals  from  which  we  are  able  to 
gain  pleasure  would  lead  us  naturally  to  look 
for  an 

(A)  Individual  Standard  of  the  Moment 

Favourable  judgment  under  standards  of 
this  type  would  be  determined  by  the  fact 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  87 

that  the  mental  phases  of  the  special  mo- 
ment of  thought  under  consideration  are 
composed  of  pleasant  revivals.  This  indi- 
vidual standard  of  the  moment  is  that  to 
which  we  refer  when  we  make  off-hand 
judgments  in  aesthetic  matters.  In  its  nature 
it  must  be  exceedingly  variable,  for  it  is 
changed  by  each  variation  in  our  surround- 
ings, by  each  alteration  of  associative  train, 
by  every  difference  in  our  physical  condition. 

Taking  up,  first,  the  influence  of  surround- 
ings, we  may  note  that  patriotic  songs,  like 
"  Marching  through  Georgia,"  or  "  Hail 
Columbia,"  which  appeal  to  us  at  a  military 
tournament,  would  seem  crude  at  Bayreuth; 
and  that  Parsifal,  which  overwhelms  one 
with  its  aesthetic  effects,  under  proper  con- 
ditions, could  not  be  appreciated  at  all  at  a 
county  fair. 

Differences  of  associative  train  determine 
our  "  moods,"  and  we  easily  recognize  the 
difficulty  one  has  who,  being  full  of  joy  and 
gladness,  attempts  to  catch  the  full  beauty 


88  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

of  an  Israel's  "Alone  in  the  World,"  or  of 
one  of  Millet's  peasant  studies ;  and  equally 
well  are  we  acquainted  with  the  failure  in 
the  sad  and  sorrowing  of  the  capacity  to 
appreciate  wit  and  humour.  And  so  of  dif- 
ferences of  physical  condition:  the  invalid 
finds  beauty  in  gentle,  soothing  music;  but 
it  is  the  vigorous  man  who  craves  the  fire 
of  Liszt  and  the  surging,  tumultuous  stream 
of  Wagner's  creations. 

But  this  individual  standard  of  the  moment 
is  quickly  recognized  to  be  unreliable,  and  we 
learn  to  appeal  to  a  higher  standard,  which 
is  still  individual,  but  which  relates  to  a  less 
variable  field,  viz.,  to 

(B)  The  Relatively  Stable  Individual  Standard. 

Judgment  under  this  standard  is  determined 
by  the  fact  that  the  fields  of  momentary  re- 
vivals change  not  infrequently  from  pleasure 
to  pain,  or  at  least  lose  their  hedonic  quality 
in  indifference,  if  held  for  any  length  of  time 
in  consideration ;  and  we  are  therefore  led  to 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  89 

judge  as  to  what  is  beautiful  by  those  fields 
that  retain  their  pleasantness  after  the  en- 
thusiasms of  the  moment  are  gone.  These 
fields  are  the  basis  of  the  judgments  that  we 
make  after  reflection,  and  they  determine  our 
personal  tastes.  From  them  are  cast  out  all 
that  reflection  shows  us  to  be  painful  in  any 
well-recognized  case,  or  indifferent  in  all  but 
imusual  cases.  To  these  fields  we  look  in  the 
careful  comparison  that  goes  with  the  analy- 
sis of  a  work  of  art,  while,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  aesthetic  fields  of  the  moment  are  the  basis 
of  our  casual  every-day  judgments. 

But  it  must  be  noted  that  we  are  still  deal- 
ing with  fields  that  are  only  relatively  per- 
manent; with  standards  that  are  liable  to 
change  from  year  to  year,  and,  to  a  lesser 
degree,  from  day  to  day ;  for  it  is  clear  that 
as  these  standards  are  determined  by  the  in- 
dividual mental  constitution  of  the  man,  they 
must  change,  as  do  the  man's  mental  fields, 
with  growth  and  development  and  alteration 
of  environment.     The  aesthetic  standards  of 


90  ESTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

our  youth  are  remembered  with  laughter  in 
middle  age.  My  little  girl  exclaims  with  de- 
light, at  sight  of  a  beautiful  sweeping  wave : 
"  Oh,  how  beautiful !  It  reminds  me  of  the 
most  delicious  of  desserts."  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  sombre  days  of  life's  decline 
the  enthusiasms  of  one's  prime  seem  extrav- 
agance ;  those  of  the  child  sheer  madness. 

The  effects  of  habit,  too,  are  here  most 
marked.  Habit  changes  the  current  of  our 
thinking,  and  altering,  therefore,  the  fields 
that  are  recalled  with  pleasure,  changes  our 
standards.  The  doctor,  as  I  have  noted 
above,  learns  to  call  a  fine  prepM'ation  of 
cancerous  tissue  beautiful.  The  average  artis- 
tic Parisian  learns  to  think  his  modified  clas- 
sical Renaissance  architecture  to  be  all  beau- 
tiful, finds  in  the  Romanesque  masterpieces 
nothing  but  barbarity,  and  utterly  despises 
everything  English. 

It  is  because  habit  is  so  powerful  an  agent 
in  the  formations  of  our  standards,  that  width 
of  view  and  of  education  is  so  important  in 


THE   critic's   standpoint.  91 

art  matters,  jlf  we  individuals  constantly  sur- 
round ourselves  with  objects  which  the  race 
of  cultivated  men  as  a  whole  has  declared  un- 
lovely, we  shall  nevertheless  all  too  soon  learn 
to  forget  their  enormities,  and  actually  may 
come  to  feel  a  sense  of  loss  when  we  do  not 
find  them  with  us.  We  are,  to  a  large  ex- 
tent, responsible  for,  as  we  are  to  some  extent 
the  makers  of,  our  own  standards  in  Esthet- 
ics as  well  as  in  Ethics.  It  is  because  of  this 
formation  of  bad  standards  through  miseduca- 
tion,  that  I  think  the  cultivated  public  ought 
to  take  a  deep  interest^ot  now  taken  in  the 
education  of  architects ;  for  in  the  nature  of 
the  case  the  architect's  work  is  often  not 
ephemeral ;  it  cannot  nearly  as  easily  as  the 
work  of  other  artists  be  removed  or  oblit- 
erated from  thought  by  inattention,  when  it 
is  found  distasteful ;  and  thus  it  must  remain, 
if  it  be  bad,  a  permanent  evil  influence,  tend- 
ing to  lower  the  standards  of  those  who  are 
to  come  after  us. 
As  we  have  said  above,  we  are  evidently 


92  JESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

still  dealing  with  standards  that  are  only  rel- 
atively permanent,  that  are  constantly  liable 
to  change.  Few  of  us  ever  realize  this  varia- 
bility, this  shifting  nature  of  individual  taste ; 
but  as  soon  as  we  do  realize  it  we  refuse  to  be 
satisfied ;  we  ask  for  something  more  certain 
and  stable ;  we  do  not  care  so  much  what  a 
person's  individual  judgment  is,  as  what  it 
ought  to  be.  To  reach  the  aesthetic  "  ought " 
of  the  hedonist,  of  him  who  believes  in  this 
dependence  of  beauty  upon  so  variable  a 
thing  as  pleasure,  is  not  the  simplest  thing 
in  the  world  for  man,  as  he  is  ordinarily 
constituted.  The  average  man  never  reaches 
it.  He  is  unwittingly  the  most  ardent  of  ab- 
solutists. His  own  personal  taste  he  believes 
to  be  a  reflection,  as  it  were,  of  a  certain  fixed 
absolute,  and  if  others  differ  from  him,  it  is, 
in  his  view,  because  they  are  thoughtless,  or 
are  led  by  other  than  aesthetic  influences,  or 
are  not  sufficiently  cultivated  to  appreciate 
what  is  good.  He  is  content  to  deal  always 
entirely  with  subjective  standards ;  and  when 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  93 

he  would  have  something  less  variable  than 
the  individual  taste  of  those  who  surround 
him,  he  canonizes  his  own  taste,  and  makes 
that  the  standard. 

But  it  is  evident  that  this  individualistic 
standard  of  personal  taste  can  have  no  philo- 
sophic validity.  If  we  are  logical  hedonists, 
when  we  feel  the  need  of  some  criterion  more 
stable  than  our  own  tastes,  we  must  turn  from 
the  consideration  of  our  own  special,  limited, 
individual,  aesthetic  field  to  one  which  is  as 
distinctly  objective  as  any  absolutist  could 
demand;  viz., — to 

(C)    The  JEsthetic  Field  of  the  highly    Cul- 
tivated Man  as  we  conceive  him. 

This  is  the  field  which  every  philosophic 
critic  must  acknowledge,  apart  from  his  own 
individual  taste,  if  he  is  to  treat  aesthetic 
matters  with  any  breadth.  The  individual 
peculiarities  of  his  own  field,  whilst  they  must 
remain  none  the  less  valid  for  himself,  must 
be  treated  as  individual  rather  than  general ; 


94  AESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

and  his  criticism  must  be  determined  by 
reference  to  the  broader  than  individual  field 
which  contains  all  that  is  common  to  those 
for  whom  he  speaks. 

This  standard,  my  reader  will  perceive,  is 
still  really  changeable  and  unstable,  but  rela- 
tively speaking,  it  is  unchangeable  and  stable, 
for  its  variations  are  determined  by  processes 
of  wide  reach  and  slow  development.  It 
must  vary  with  width  of  experience,  of  edu- 
cation, of  refinement.  It  will  change  as  a 
person  limits  his  notions  of  life  and  of  the 
universe,  or  as  his  views  become  broader  and 
more  sjrmpathetic.  It  will  alter  with  varia- 
tion of  his  conception  as  to  what  is  worthy 
in  the  world  surrounding  him,  and  as  to  the 
sincerity  and  value  of  other  people's  beliefs ; 
and  in  the  end  it  will  be  found  to  be  largely 
determined  by  his  ethical  conceptions.  This 
fact  is  expressed  by  Wundt  when  he  says, 
"Effectiveness  of  higher  aesthetic  representa- 
tions depends  always  upon  the  arousal  of 
moral  or  religious  ideas."     The  same  general 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  95 

conviction  is  expressed  by  Taine,  who,  al- 
though no  hedonist,  would  have  us  measure 
a  work  of  art  by  its  importance  and  benefi- 
cience,  that  is,  by  its  power  to  develop  and 
preserve  the  individual,  and  the  group  in 
which  the  individual  is  comprehended.  Simi- 
larly, Fechner  would  have  us  make  our  own 
final  standard  of  aesthetic  valuation  depend- 
ent upon  our  conception  of  what,  on  the 
whole,  has  the  best  outcome  for  the  well- 
being  of  mankind,  for  time  and  eternity. 

The  relative  stability  of  this  standard  gives 
it  objective  force  as  a  real  existing  Ideal. 
Professor  Royce  has  lately  emphasized  the 
view  that  our  notions  of  reality  in  the  world 
about  us  are,  to  a  great  extent,  dependent 
upon  the  possibility  of  comparison  by  individ- 
uals of  effects  upon  themselves  and  others, 
and  by  the  perception  of  agreement  in  the 
experiences  involved ;  in  other  words,  depend- 
ent upon  social  recognitions,  or,  as  he  puts 
it,  "it  is  social  community  that  is  the  true 
differentia  of  our  external  world."     With  this 


96  ESTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

view  in  mind  it  becomes  clear  that  the  stand- 
ards that  we  are  now  discussing  must  become 
objective  in  a  sense  that  allies  them  closely 
to  the  realities  of  the  external  world.  For 
in  the  conception  of  these  standards  we  are 
taking  account  of  the  agreements  in  the 
experience  of  those  whose  judgment  we  be- 
lieve to  be  most  worthy  of  confidence,  and 
are  endeavouring  to  co-ordinate  our  own 
experience  with  these  agreements. 

In  emphasizing  the  value  of  the  recogni- 
tion of  other  standards,  however,  we  must 
not  overlook  the  fact  that  individuality  of 
field  is  none  the  less  important,  for  upon  it 
is  dependent 

(D)  The  Ideal  jEsihetic  Field. 

This  ideal  field,  from  our  standpoint,  must 
be  a  variable  one,  differing  for  each  individ- 
ual; no  Absolute  as  usually  conceived;  no 
fixed  objective  Platonic  ideal,  towards  which 
we  weakly  strain;  but  the  field  which  in 
some  direction  differs  from  the  normal  field, 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  97 

and  in  this  direction  the  individual  feels  that 
the  world  ought  to  agree  with  him.  Each 
one  of  us,  however  prosaic,  has  some  sort  of 
an  ideal  field  of  this  kind;  non-agreement 
with  it  in  others  looks  like  aesthetic  error. 
So  firmly  rooted  is  this  belief  in  one's  own 
ideal  that  intolerance  is  proverbial  among 
artists  and  connoisseurs;  intolerance  which 
is  often  amusing  to  one  who  looks  at  the 
subject  from  a  student's  standpoint.  Once 
in  a  while  an  individual  Ideal,  when  ex- 
pressed, enlightens  the  world  of  art,  and 
then  we  have  the  artistic  genius;  he  is  the 
prophet  who  shows  to  others  an  ideal  field 
which  they  at  once  recognize  as  effective 
for  themselves,  although  but  for  him  it  would 
have  been  unknown  to  them.  To  express 
his  own  ideal  must  the  artist  work.  He 
must  indeed  produce  effective  results  in  the 
field  of  presentative  assthetic  enjoyment,  but 
if  his  work  is  to  be  of  importance,  it  must 
go  beyond  the  momentary  effect;  it  must 
compel  recognition  as  part  and  parcel  of  the 

H 


98  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

stable  field  of  pleasurable  revival  (B),  and 
must  not  stand  opposed  to  the  objective 
standard  which  is  given  by  recognition  of 
the  value  of  the  opinion  of  others,  whose 
cultivation  entitles  them  to  speak  with  au- 
thority (C)*  if,  however,  the  work  of  an 
artist  is  to  be  recognized  as  that  of  a  master, 
it  must  express  an  ideal  (D)  which  the  com- 
mon mortal,  however  highly  cultivated,  does 
not  and  can  not  reach  of  himself,  but  which 
he'  will  recognize,  when  it  is  reached  by 
another,  as  an  enlightenment  of  his  own 
duller  conceptions. 

Now  I  wish  to  ask  my  readers  to  note 
the  nobility  of  this  standard  of  relativity. 

The  conception  of  an  absolute  standard, 
which  we  have  discarded,  the  notion  of  a 
fixed  Universal  Beauty,  which  the  ,  artist 
strives  to  conceive  and  to  represent,  has  in 
itself  great  aesthetic  value,  altogether  apart 
from  its  philosophic  value ;  it  attracts  us  by 
the  relief  it  offers  from  the  distracting  oppo- 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  99 

sitions  of  individualism,  and  by  the  fact  that 
it  arouses  within  us  that  certain  sense  of 
sublimity  (itself  an  aesthetic  state),  which 
attaches  to  all  things  that  are  dimly  felt  to 
exist,  and  yet  are  but  indefinitely  realized ;  to 
all  that  which  on  account  of  inscrutableness 
invites  worship. 

But  if  we  lose  something  in  adopting  the 
standards  of  relativity,  I  think  we  are  on  the 
whole  gainers.  For  it  is  apparent  that  our 
view  tells  us  that  the  sense  of  beauty  is  never 
to  be  lost  to  us.  If  an  absolute  fixed  beauty 
existed  and  were  once  attained,  if  its  princi- 
ples were  once  known  so  that  they  could  be 
applied  to  all  of  life,  then  surely  with  this,  as 
with  all  else  of  human  attainment,  its  com- 
monplaceness  would  involve  loss  of  interest 
for  us,  and  in  the  end  our  race  would  be  de- 
prived of  one  of  the  best  gifts  and  of  one  of 
the  strongest  of  incentives  to  noble  action; 
that  is  the  capacity  to  appreciate  and  the  ten- 
dency to  search  for  new  expressions  of  beauty. 

But  the  doctrine  here  defended  enables  us 


100  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

to  look  forward  to  an  ever  new  and  ever 
higher  conception  of  beauty,  arising  as  man 
develops  towards  nobility  and  perfection. 
As  these  standards  are  determined  by  sub- 
jective states,  as  they  differ  with  human 
attainment  and  enlightenment,  so  evidently 
must  they  be  determined  by  our  character; 
as  that  develops  towards  higher  worth,  so 
will  our  estimate  of  Ideal  Beauty  continue 
to  develop,  ever  disclosing  to  our  view  new 
glories,  and  bringing  to  us  new  enthusiasms ; 
so  will  beauty  continue  to  enlighten  our  path 
and  alleviate  the  burdens  of  life,  and  still  re- 
main as  an  incentive  to  nobler  living  and 
higher  thinking. 

Before  we  turn  from  this  subject  of  stand- 
ards I  will  again  remind  my  reader  of  a 
point  touched  upon  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ter. Hedonism  in  ^Esthetics  is  for  many 
difficult  to  accept,  because  it  seems  to  them 
to  savour  of  what  is  ordinarily  called  Epi- 
cureanism. If  it  were  true  that  sestheticism 
merely  teaches  selfish  pleasure-getting,  if  the 


THE   critic's   standpoint  101 

artist  were  led  to  work  merely  to  give  pleas- 
ure that  he  might  thus  gain  advantage  to 
himself,  then  surely  we  could  not  complain 
if  our  ethical  masters  were  to  renew  ascetic 
attacks  upon  all  emphasis  of  sesthetic  cult- 
ure. But  as  we  have  already  seen,  there  is 
no  warrant  under  our  theory  for  any  such 
view.  The  artist  follows,  blindly  as  to  the 
end  in  view,  the  voice  of  a  leader,  the  guid- 
ance of  an  impulse,  and  the  one  who  judges 
rightly  of  beauty  is  as  far  removed  from  ego- 
istic influence  as  is  possible  under  any  of  the 
circumstances  of  life.  The  very  forms  under 
which  the  higher  art  necessarily  presents 
itself,  force  self-centredness  to  give  place  to 
sympathetic  width  of  view;  the  cramping 
limitations  of  egoism  break  down  in  the  aes- 
thetic atmosphere. 

I  have  spoken  above  of  the  development  of 
standards,  of  the  fact  that  our  standards  do 
and  must  change  with  our  growth  and  devel- 
opment, and  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  this 
point  once  more  because  it  has  an  important 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  1BARJBARA  COLLEGE  LIBRA^Tf- 


102  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

bearing  upon  assthetic  pedagogy.  If  objects 
appear  beautiful  to  us  as  they  are  able  to 
produce  in  us  a  sense  of  living,  permanent 
pleasure  in  revival,  then  it  is  evidently  im- 
possible that  we  should  perceive  beauty  in  an 
object  unless  it  does  produce  these  permanent 
pleasures.  The  youth  who  has  never  felt 
the  strong  bitterness  of  human  suffering, 
cannot  be  expected  to  appreciate  the  beau- 
ties of  Shakespeare's  King  Lear,  nor  can 
the  child  who  knows  not  yet  the  fulness  of 
mature  human  love  be  expected  to  enjoy 
Wagner's  Tristan  and  Isolde  in  its  entirety. 
Each  person's  perception  of  beauty  must  be 
determined  by  his  capacities  of  associative 
thought.  It  is  useless  to  give  meat  to  babes, 
as  valueless,  indeed,  as  to  feed  vigorous  men 
from  the  breast.  We  too  often  expect  youth, 
or  those  of  low  mental  endowment,  to  appre- 
ciate beauties  which  can  be  grasped  only  by 
men  of  capacity,  who  have  given  their  years 
to  the  acquirements  which  make  appreciation 
possible.      It  is  absurd  to   expect    average 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  103 

young  children  to  gain  anything  but  ennui 
and  a  sense  of  distress  and  dislike  from  con- 
certs of  symphonic  complexities,  and  all  such 
attempts  are  in  my  opinion  foreordained  to 
failure. 

It  is  vain  also  to  hope  to  revolutionize 
the  standards  of  taste  of  the  people  living 
in  the  "slums"  by  giving  to  them  exhibi- 
tions of  paintings  of  such  merit  as  can  only 
be  appreciated  by  mature  men  of  the  fullest 
development.  There  may  be  a  lesson  of 
sympathy  in  such  action  by  the  so-called 
"upper  classes,"  but  there  is  little  sesthetic 
hope  in  it;   of  that  I  am  convinced. 

It  is  altogether  futile  to  attempt  to  force 
aesthetic  standards  upon  others ;  what  we 
should  aim  at  is  the  development  within  the 
young  and  the  ignorant  of  the  capacities  and 
mental  activities  which  will  not  only  enable 
them  to  appreciate  art  work  of  high  value, 
but  will  lead  them  spontaneously  to  go  out 
in  search  for  it.  To  attempt  to  force  our 
own   standards  upon  them,  either  produces 


104  -ffilSTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

disgust  or  despair,  most  seriously  opposed  to 
the  development  of  a  refined  aesthetic  judg- 
ment; or  else,  and  all  too  often,  an  insincere 
pretence  of  appreciation,  which  is  evidently 
immoral  in  effect. 

The  most  fruitful  lesson  that  is  taught  by 
this  doctrine  of  relativity  is  one  of  liberality, 
of  tolerance  of  other's  standards,  of  humility 
as  to  our  own.  As  we  have  seen,  the  aesthetic 
field  of  childhood  is  not  that  of  the  youth, 
nor  that  of  the  youth  the  same  as  that  of  the 
man  of  mature  years.  Differences  of  culti- 
vation and  of  point  of  view  necessarily  in- 
volve differences  of  standard,  and  must  be 
constantly  taken  intp  consideration.  As  we 
see  the  advance  we  make  from  childhood's 
standards,  as  we  hope  to  gain  still  more  per- 
fect ones  with  our  further  culture,  so  must 
we  be  willing  to  recognize  the  validity  for 
others  of  their  standards  which  are  not  ours, 
and  study  them  to  see  whether  they  may  not 
have  in  them  elements  by  which  our  own 
can  be  improved. 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  105 

We  must  not  expect  that  others  will  agree 
with  us  in  our  revival-pleasure-getting,  ex- 
cept on  the  broadest  lines.  The  failure  to 
recognize  this  fact  is  often  a  serious  loss. 
The  belief  that  beauty  is  something  absolute, 
which  he  has  mastered,  brings  to  many 
a  man  fulness  of  ennui,  and  leads  many  an- 
other to  a  hopeless  C3niicism,  when  he  finds 
that  what  he  has  learned  to  consider  pre- 
eminently valuable  begins  to  pall  upon  him. 
Such  is  the  position  which  too  many  a  critical 
mind  reaches,  and  which  would  be  avoided 
could  the  critic  but  look  beyond  the  standard 
which  he  himself  has  set,  and  take  cognizance 
of  the  manner  in  which  his  own  sesthetic 
field  alters  and  develops  as  he  grows  in  con- 
stitution of  mind  and  life. 

Now  let  us  consider  a  few  points  of  direct 
application  to  the  critic. 

There  is  a  feeling  current  to  no  small 
extent  that  there  exists  an  opposition  be- 
tween the  critical  attitude  and  that  of  the 
artistic  producer ;  an  opposition  which  some- 


106  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

times  appears  in  fierce  denunciation  of  the 
critic  by  the  artist,  and  which  again  voices 
itself  in  objection  to  the  intellectual,  critical 
treatment  of  assthetic  subjects  in  general,  on 
the  ground  that  such  treatment,  if  encouraged 
in  a  man  or  race,  is  likely  to  curtail  in  the 
man  or  race  aesthetic  production  of  high 
grade. 

The  study  of  art  history,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, has  tended  to  substantiate  this  notion 
of  the  inverse  relation  of  art  production  to 
intellectual  consideration  of  aesthetic  matters ; 
for  as  it  shows  ages  which  are  unproductive 
of 'art  work  of  high  value;  it  seems  also  to 
show  that  the  age  of  non-production  has 
often  been  one  of  devotion  to  pure  critical 
formalism. 

It  seems  to  me,  on  the  whole,  that  it  might 
better  be  claimed  that  the  studious  age  has 
been  the  parent  of  the  productive  one ;  but, 
at  all  events,  the  facts  are  in  all  probability 
accounted  for,  not  by  any  lack  of  critical 
spirit  during  the  ages  of  great  art  outcome, 


THE   CKITIC'S   STANDPOINT.  107 

but  by  the  emphasis  of  critical  work  which 
the  absence  of  notable  art  production  brings 
into  prominence. 

So  much  for  the  grounds  for  this  opinion. 
That  the  opposition  is  superficial  is  clear  how- 
ever, for  as  we  have  already  seen  there  is  no 
opposition  between  the  mental  attitude  of 
the  student  and  of  the  producer,  the  former 
is  surely  the  helper  of  the  latter ;  and  further 
we  must  remember,  as  we  have  already  noted, 
that  the  critic  is  no  more  than  the  student 
observer,  who  deals  with  analysis  and  with 
the  determination  of  the  validity  of  stand- 
ards, and  furthermore  that  the  artist  must 
upon  occasion  take  the  place  of  an  observer, 
and  will  do  better  work  in  so  far  as  he  be- 
comes his  own  most  serious  critic.  It  is  evi- 
dent, therefore,  that  there  is  no  fundamental 
opposition  between  artist  and  critic. 

But  it  is  true  that  in  practice  the  critic  far 
too  often  assumes  an  attitude  of  hostility. 
A  man  may  indeed  devote  his  life  to  super- 
ficial carping,  without  having  sympathy  with, 


108  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

or  without  ever  knowing,  the  artist's  aims  or 
methods ;  but  surely  this  is  not  worthy  of  the 
name  of  criticism.  It  is  this  superficiality 
that  irritates  the  artist,  and  which  is  not  for 
a  moment  to  be  condoned.  To  become  a 
worthy  critic,  one  must  be  not  only  a  deep 
student  of  the  philosophy  of  art,  but  must 
make  himself  conversant  with  the  artist's 
technical  methods  and  his  personal  aims.  If 
the  artist  have  limited  views  and  aims,  his 
spirit  and  his  work  cannot  be  properly  appre- 
ciated by  one  who  is  expecting  to  find  views 
and  aims  other  than  the  artist's,  and  equally 
limited  in  other  directions.  And  here  we 
strike  the  greatest  difficulty  in  the  mental 
constitution  of  our  critics.  They  are  seldom 
broad  enough  or  accomplished  enough.  They 
have  learned  to  know  well  some  little  comer 
in  the  wide  field  of  SBsthetic  endeavour,  and 
they  judge  all  else  in  the  field  by  the  stand- 
ards thus  reached.  Perhaps  it  is  the  lover 
of  Wagner  who  fails  to  see  beauty  in  music 
that   deals   with    clearer   melody   and  more 


THE  critic's  standpoint.  109 

formal  counterpoint.  Perhaps  it  is  one  who 
feels  deeply  the  study  of  "values"  in  paint- 
ing and  forgets  "composition,"  and  subject, 
and  all  else  in  the  picture  before  him,  judg- 
ing it  by  comparing  its  "  values  "  with  those 
of  the  master  whom  he  worships.  Perhaps 
it  is  a  lover  of  Milton  who  refuses  to  see 
strength  in  the  work  of  another  whose  style 
is  more  free,  and  whose  conceptions  are  more 
mystical.  The  critic,  and  the  artist  so  far 
as  he  is  his  own  acute  critic,  must,  it  is  true, 
consider  first  the  delights  of  immediate  im- 
pression, but  he  should  never  forget  that  the 
vivid  elements,  which  dazzle  for  a  moment, 
are  the  ones  of  which  we  most  surely  tire, 
and  that  fuller,  more  permanent,  and  more 
fundamental  delights  must  grow  upon  us  as 
this  vividness  disappears,  if  the  aesthetic  work 
is  to  remain  a  permanent  acquisition  to  Art. 
The  emphasis  in  the  critic's  mind,  of  a 
limited  phase  of  aesthetic  endeavour,  is  thus 
liable  to  produce  within  him  narrowness  of 
view  which  vitiates  his  judgment.     This   is 


110  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

a  special  danger  attaching  to  the  purist's 
standpoint.  Habit,  in  the  aesthetic  life,  as 
elsewhere,  easily  comes  to  dominate  us.  A 
man  may,  by  the  emphasis  of  certain  formal 
characteristics  of  art  products,  learn  to  dis- 
dain a  work  which  fails  to  come  up  to  his 
standard  in  these  particulars,  whilst  he  alto- 
gether overlooks  graces  and  strength  in  other 
than  these  formal  directions.  Perhaps  the 
greatest  danger  the  critic  has  to  guard  against 
is  that  of  the  artificial  creation  withm  him- 
self of  petty  standards  which,  when  shocked, 
give  a  sense  of  ugliness  sufficiently  predomi- 
nant to  prevent  the  appreciation  of  wider 
beauties  which  should  determine  his  mature 
judgment.  "Width  of  education,  width  of 
view,  but  especially  unbounded  sympathy,  — 
these  are  the  qualities  which  the  critic 
should  encourage  within  himself  as  a  safe- 
guard against  the  pitfalls  we  have  thus 
brought  into  view. 

I  cannot  close  this  brief  discussion  of  the 
critic's  standpoint  without  saying  a  word  con- 


THE    critic's   standpoint.  Ill 

cerning  the  responsibilities  which  go  with  the 
critical  attitude ;  and  this  is  said  not  only 
to  the  professional  critic,  but  to  each  and  all 
of  my  readers ;  for  all  of  us  at  times  assume 
the  part  of  the  critic  in  the  eyes  of  some  of 
our  companions.  It  is  so  easy,  as  I  have 
already  said,  for  a  critic,  whose  word  is 
heeded,  to  make  and  unmake  standards  of 
art  for  others,  to  make  and  unmake  aesthetic 
objects.  On  the  one  hand,  excessive  praise 
of  some  work  of  moderate  merit  will  result 
in  the  attachment  of  importance  to  that  work 
for  all  time  in  the  eyes  of  those  who  trust 
our  judgment ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
equally  true  that  derision  or  blame  given 
to  a  work  of  power  will  continue  to  lower 
its  value  with  those  who  trust  to  us,  long 
after  they  have  discovered  for  themselves 
that  the  art  work  has  value  for  them.  Let 
us  all  then,  when  we  act  as  critics,  look  well 
to  it  that  we  use  the  influence  which  we  wield 
for  aesthetic  good  and  not  for  aesthetic  evil. 


CHAPTER  V. 

ALGEDONIC   ESTHETICS.      I. 

Negative  Esthetic  Principles. 

In  the  chapters  which  have  preceded  this 
we  have  seen  that  Esthetics  may  with  pro- 
priety be  considered  as  a  branch  of  Hedonics ; 
as  being  dependent  directly  upon  pleasure 
laws,  and  indirectly,  therefore,  upon  the  laws 
of  pain.  Hence  the  title  of  this  chapter : 
the  word  "algedonic"  (dXyos,  pain ;  yjSovij, 
pleasure)  being  used  to  cover  the  whole 
ground  of  pain  and  pleasure. 

In  Chapter  IV.  we  have  considered  our 
subject  from  the  standpoint  of  the  critic, 
and  have  learned  to  appreciate  the  impor- 
tance of  width  of  view,  and  of  liberality  of 
judgment  concerning  others'  standards :  but 
our  ideal  standard  has  been  fixed  by  the  con- 

112 


NEGATIVE    PRINCIPLES.  113 

siderations  of  the  first  and  third  chapters. 
The  end  to  which  the  aesthetic  producer 
works  is  the  creation  of  objects  which  shall 
be  beautiful  for  the  highest  type  of  man; 
or,  to  use  more  technical  language,  the  cre- 
ation of  a  full,  and  relatively  permanent 
pleasure-field  of  revival  in  those  who  are  the 
representatives  of  our  highest  ideal  of  man- 
hood, and  in  whom  the  trend  of  develop- 
ment is  towards  the  noblest  forms  which 
human  thought  is  capable  of  showing. 

We  are  now  to  ask  what  help  we  may 
obtain  in  the  practical  search  after  beauty, 
and  in  our  judgments  concerning  others'  like 
efforts,  from  our  study  of  the  nature  of 
pleasure  which  we  see  to  be  so  all-important 
for  both  worker  and  critic-observer.  If  our 
theoretical  study  be  worth  anything,  it 
should  be  possible  for  us  to  deduce  certain 
general  laws  of  aesthetic  practice  from  a 
consideration  of  the  conditions  upon  which 
pleasure-getting  depends.     It  should  also  be 


114  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

possible,  in  some  cases  at  least,  to  trace  the 
practical  application  of  the  principles  dis- 
covered, in  the  empirical  rules  adopted  by 
aesthetic  workers,  and  perhaps  finally  to  find 
the  psychological  bases  upon  which  have 
been  built  the  aBsthetic  theories  which  we 
find  it  necessary  to  reject,  although  they  be 
taught  by  high  authorities. 

It  will  be  well,  I  think,  to  restate  suc- 
cinctly the  algedonic-sesthetic  theory  which 
we  are  to  develop  in  what  follows. 

The  Beautiful  is  that  in  nature,  or  in  the 
activities  or  productions  of  man,  which  pro- 
duces effects  in  us  that  in  retrospect  remain 
permanently  pleasant.  I  have  spoken  of  this 
so  fully  above  that  I  do  not  need  to  enlarge 
upon  it  here. 

The  Ugly,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that  which 
produces  effects  that  remain  permanently 
painful  when  viewed  in  retrospect.  For  in- 
stance, a  most  disagreeable,  painful,  and  alto- 
gether ugly  set  of  impressions  may  be 
obtained   in  connection  with  the   action   of 


NEGATIVE   PEINCIPLES.  115 

saving  a  man  from  suffocation  in  some  nau- 
seous chamber.  But  in  the  revival  of  the 
scene,  which  occurs  when  we  judge  of  its 
aesthetic  quality,  the  pain  has  gone  out  of 
the  presentation,  and  the  nobility  of  the  act, 
and  all  that  this  nobility  implies,  sweeps 
away  the  ugliness,  and  makes  the  act  one 
of  commanding  beauty. 

K  a  natural  object,  or  the  production  of 
the  artist,  is  to  be  effective  as  an  aesthetic 
object,  it  must  bring  not  only  pleasure  by 
its  mere  presentation,  but,  more  than  that, 
it  must  result  in  the  production  of  pleasant 
revivals,  that  will  coalesce  with  that  field 
of  pleasurable  revival  which  in  reflection  we 
call  our  aesthetic  field.  The  artist  must 
employ  all  possible  means  leading  to  the 
attainment  of  immediate  pleasures  so  far  as 
these  are  compatible  with  the  production  of 
pleasures  in  revival.  He  may  add  much  in 
the  way  of  mere  presentative  pleasure  which 
perhaps  may  not  bring  us  pleasurable  effect 
in  revival;  and  all  such  added  pleasure  in 


116  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

presentation  is  a  gain  to  the  work  as  art, 
provided  it  neither  bring  pain  in  revival, 
nor  swamp  with  resulting  indifference  the 
revivals  that  are  pleasant.  He  may  even 
go  further,  and  add  elements  which  give 
decided  active  painfulness  in  the  direct  pres- 
entation produced  by  the  examination  of  the 
art  work,  provided  the  result  in  revival  be 
on  this  account  made  more  permanently 
pleasurable.  He  may  use  pains  of  restric- 
tion, in  either  presentation  or  revival,  in 
moderation,  if  they  are  treated  as  indices  of 
fulness  of  pleasure  to  be  reached  when  the 
restrictions  are  removed. 

Even  in  the  mere  examination  of  art 
works,  we  must  take  account  of  revival 
fields;  for  we  lose  much  if  we  restrict  our 
attention  either  to  the  detail,  or  to  the  mere 
totality  before  us.  Unless  we  allow  the  play 
of  revivals  to  have  full  sway,  our  best  enjoy- 
ment is  gone. 

While  pleasures  in  primary  presentation, 
therefore,  are  important,  the  pleasures  of  re- 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  117 

vival  are  of  pre-eminent  moment  in  aesthetic 
consideration. 

Our  task  here  amounts  simply  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  means  to  be  adopted  to  pro- 
duce a  pleasure-field  of  relative  permanency. 

All  will  agree,  I  think,  upon  two  points 
which  I  wish  to  emphasize  at  this  moment. 

First,  that  pain  is  incompatible  with  pleas- 
ure, or,  in  other  words,  that  with  a  given  ele- 
ment of  consciousness,  the  conditions  that 
involve  pain  must  be  absent  if  the  conditions 
that  involve  pleasure  are  present.  Second, 
that  there  is  a  field  of  non-pleasure,  which  is 
also  not  painful.  This  is  the  field  of  so- 
called  indifference,  which,  although  theoreti- 
cally narrow,  is  practically  wide  in  extent, 
because  often  the  variations  from  the  moment 
of  indifference  towards  pain  or  pleasure  are 
so  slight  as  to  escape  notice. 

Now,  it  is  evident  that  both  of  these  fields 
of  non-pleasure,  both  that  of  pain-getting  and 
that  of  indifference,  are  to  be  avoided  before 


118  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

we  can  reach  pleasure  with  any  given  set  of 
mental  elements.  The  field  of  pain  must  be 
entirely  eliminated,  unless  its  occurrence  is 
useful  for  pleasure-production  to  follow ;  that 
of  indifference  must  be  suppressed  so  far  as 
is  necessary  in  order  to  avoid  the  overwhelm- 
ing of  the  pleasurable  elements  by  those 
which  do  not  interest  us. 

• 

Negative  Esthetic  Principles. 

It  is  evident  from  what  I  have  just  said 
that  we  may  treat  as  the  first  principle  of 

aesthetics 

The  Exclusion  of  Pain ;   the  Elimination  of 
the  Ugly. 

We  all  realize  that  there  are  practically 
two  great  classes  of  pains.  First,  the  pains 
produced  by  repression  of  activities;  and, 
second,  the  pains  produced  by  excess  of 
active  functioning. 

I  have  elsewhere  shown,  I  think,  that  in 
all  probability  the  first  class  must  be  referred 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  119 

to  the  second;  active  functioning  apparently 
being  necessary  to  pain  of-  any  kind.  As  a 
matter  of  practical  experience,  however,  we 
find  two  means  by  which  we  may  produce 
pain,  viz.,  by  the  repression  of  activities  and 
by  the  hypernormal  stimulation  of  activities. 
This  fact,  which  doubtless  has  prevented  the 
earlier  recognition  of  the  common  basis  of  all 
pains,  makes  the  current  distinction  between 
the  two  classes  of  pain  perfectly  legitimate 
for  us  who  are  here  concerned  with  methods 
of  pain  production.  We  may,  therefore,^ 
properly  divide  our  first  principle  into  two 
subsidiary  ones,  —  (A),  the  avoidance  of  re- 
pressive pains,  and  (B),  the  prevention  of 
pains  of  excessive  functioning. 

(A)   The  Avoidance  of  Bepressim  Pains. 

Repressive  pains  occur  when  a  mental  ele- 
ment, a  thought,  an  object,  which  would  have 
appeared  in  consciousness  if  the  conditions 
remained  normal,  for  one  reason  or  another 
fails  to  so  appear.     This  may  happen  (1st) 


120  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

where  the  mental  element  habitually  arises 
in  a  rhythmical  manner  in  answer  to  certain 
stimuli,  provided  these  stimuli  fail  to  appear 
at  the  usual  time.  Examples  of  this  form 
of  repressive  pain  are  found  in  connection 
with  our  quasi-vegetative  activities,  of  which 
breathing  and  its  resultants  throughout  the 
system,  and  digestive  processes  are  examples ; 
the  pains  of  suffocation  coming  with  the 
holding  of  one's  breath  and  the  pains  of  hun- 
ger and  thirst  arising  from  abstinence  from 
food  and  drink  are  due  to  such  repressions. 
These  pains  are  to  be  avoided,  of  course,  if 
we  are  to  obtain  a  pleasure-field,  but  as  no 
one  who  desired  to  produce  an  aesthetic  work 
would  think  of  giving  it  such  form  that  its 
appreciation  would  be  dependent,  for  exam- 
ple, upon  the  holding  of  one's  breath,  or  upon 
the  existence  of  the  mental  states  which  we 
experience  when  we  hunger  or  thirst,  there 
is  no  reason  why  we  should  enlarge  upon  this 
point.  These  special  repressive  pains  are 
induced  only  by  the  production  of  abnormal 


NEGATIVE    PRINCIPLES.  121 

conditions,  and  in  a  search  for  means  towards 
pleasure  production,  such  as  ^Esthetics  is  held 
to  involve,  we  should  expect  to  find  them 
naturally  avoided,  as  we  do. 

There  is  another  kind  of  repressive  pain, 
however,  which  is  of  much  more  importance. 
I  refer  to  those  pains  (2d)  that  appear  if 
mental  elements  arise  which  normally  would 
bring  out,  would  act  as  stimulants  to  the 
production  of,  other  mental  elements,  these 
latter  mental  elements  in  fact  failing  to  ap- 
pear. We  are  all  familiar  with  such  dases. 
At  a  certain  time  of  the  day  some  voice  or 
sound  calls  us  to  dinner,  or  the  gong  in  a 
lecture-room  tells  us  that  our  hour  of  effort 
has  ceased  and  that  some  time  of  pleasant 
relaxing  conversation  has  come.  If  some 
business  necessity  prevent  our  going  to  din- 
ner, or  if  the  persistency  of  our  lecturer  pre- 
vent immediate  relaxation  of  attention,  we 
all  know  the  uneasiness  that  follows.  All 
cravings  and  desires  fall  under  this  heading; 
they  are   all   painful   states   caused  by  fail- 


122  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

ures  of  fruition  in  directions  in  which  our 
mental  life  would  naturally  have  developed. 

Well,  these  pains  also  are  to  be  avoided  if 
we  are  to  reach  pleasure  in  connection  with 
the  elements  involved,  and  the  principle  here 
enunciated  would  seem  to  teach  that  the  artist 
must,  in  general,  avoid  the  stimulation  of  crav- 
ings which  cannot  be  satisfied,  the  production 
of  desires  which  are  impossible  of  fulfilment, 
the  suggestion  of  lines  of  thought  which  can- 
not be  completed. 

It  is  not  apparent,  however,  at  the  first 
glance,  that  any  such  canon  of  practice  is 
recognized  by  artists  or  critics.  Indeed,  on 
the  contrary,  many  works  of  art  which  we  all 
agree  to  be  of  the  highest  order  of  excellence, 
are  distinctly  felt  to  produce  these  longings 
of  a  dull  and  indefinite  sort.  But  when  we 
consider  the  matter  closely,  we  see  why  no 
such  rule  is  acknowledged ;  for  it  is  evident 
that  these  pains  will  be  admissible,  in  a  way, 
provided  the  observer's  thought  is  thereby 
turned  in  new  directions  of  pleasure-getting. 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  123 

It  will  be  admitted,  I  think,  that  it  cannot  be 
the  proper  aim  of  an  artist  to  induce  strong 
cravings,  intense  desires,  fierce  passion.  It 
cannot  be  forgotten  that  as  long  ago  as  the 
days  of  the  Greek  supremacy,  the  power  of 
artistic  work  was  felt  to  lie  largely  in  its 
capacity  to  dispel  the  passions,  to  purify  the 
objective  through  the  ideal.  Those  art  works 
which  evidently  induce  lesser  unsatisfiable 
longings,  as  of  love  and  pity,  or  which  bring 
desire  for  what  is  unattained  or  at  the  mo- 
ment unattainable,  gain  their  power,  it  would 
seem,  not  through  the  pain  so  much  as  by 
the  flow  of  sympathetic  activity  which  is 
produced,  or  by  the  impulses  which  are 
awakened,  or  by  the  revival  of  old-time 
thoughts  which  in  their  wide  reaches  are 
ever  delightful.  It  is  in  reflection  that  we 
are  most  powerfully  affected  by  these  works 
of  art.  As  we,  in  revival,  view  the  mental 
state  which  was  induced  by  their  study,  we 
feel  the  sympathetic  delights  which  give 
them  worth,  or  we  see  that  they  brought  to 


124  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

US  impulses  that  we  hold  to  be  of  highest 
ethical  value,  and  which  it  must  always  give 
us  the  deepest  satisfaction  to  feel  that  we 
have  possessed.  With  the  bitterest  pains  of 
repression,  we  contemplate  the  portrait  of 
one  whom  we  have  loved  but  lost  j  and  yet, 
with  the  pains,  are  aroused  so  many  trains 
of  memory  which  tell  of  joy,  that  we  return 
again  and  again  to  the  contemplation.  We 
would  not  give  up  the  pains,  for  without 
them  were  impossible  the  renewal  of  other 
deep  satisfactions. 

But  there  is  another  point  to  be  brought 
forward  here  to  account  for  the  permissibility 
of  the  guarded  use  of  repression  in  aesthetic 
work  of  high  quality.  A  careful  study  of 
algedonic  theory  will  show  us  that  the  exis- 
tence of  repressive  pains  is  an  indication  that 
the  mental  element  which  fails  would  appear 
pleasurably  if  it  appeared  at  all.  If,  then, 
the  pains  of  craving  can  finally  be  replaced 
by  the  pleasures  of  satisfaction  of  the  crav- 
ing, it  is  apparent  that  the  pains  of  repres- 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  125 

sion,  within  limits,  may  be  encouraged  by  art 
workers,  for  the  very  sake  of  the  after  effects 
of  pleasure  to  be  obtained.  The  pains  of  re- 
pressed activity  indicate,  as  I  have  elsewhere 
argued,  an  organic  condition  of  full  prepared- 
ness, so  that  if  action  supervenes  it  will  bring 
the  highest  degree  of  pleasure  that  can  be 
induced  by  the  organ's  activity.  These 
repression  pains  may,  therefore,  be  taken  as 
an  index  of  pleasure  capacity,  and  we  may 
expect  them  to  be  used  by  the  artist,  because 
thereby  he  will  gain  certainty  that  the  pleas- 
ure limits  have  been  attained,  and  that  a  full 
pleasure  will  accompany  the  action  which  is 
to  follow  the  repressal. 

Dependent  as  such  transformations  from 
pain  to  pleasure  are  upon  the  succession  of 
psychic  states,  we  should  look  for  notable 
practical  exemplifications  of  them  in  arts  that 
deal  especially  with  phenomena  of  succession, 
i.e.,  in  music  and  in  literature.  In  music,  we 
have  example  in  the  delayed  resolution  of  a 
chord  which  is  allowable  even  to  the  point 


126  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

of  painfulness.  In  literary  work,  we  have 
example  in  those  every-day  complications  of 
plot  which  delay  the  consummation  longed 
for,  and  finally  reached.  Schiller,  speaking 
of  tragedy,  tells  us  that  "  the  highest  degree 
of  moral  pleasure  cannot  make  itself  felt 
except  in  conflict.  It  follows,  hence,  that  the 
highest  degree  of  pleasure  must  always  be 
accompanied  by  pain."  The  principle  is  one 
of  wide  import  in  all  branches  of  Esthetics, 
and  here  I  think  we  have  its  basis;  for,  as 
we  have  seen,  organic  rest  is  a  most  impor- 
tant condition  of  pleasure  production.  How 
are  we  to  know  that  we  have  gained  full 
capacity  for  organic  functioning  unless  we 
wait  on  the  wide  systemic  pain  which  comes 
after  the  absorption  of  energy  has  reached 
its  maximum? 

We  have  here  also  the  psychologic  basis  of 
many  a  metaphysical  theory  of  the  relation 
of  the  Ugly  to  the  Beautiful,  and  of  the  value 
of  the  presentation  of  the  Ugly  as  an  element 
in  the  Beautiful,  as  instances  of  which  we  may 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  127 

note  Schlegel's  dictum  that  the  principle  of 
modern  art  can  only  be  found  if  beauty  and 
the  characteristic  ugly  be  indissolubly  con- 
nected ;  and  Rosenkranz's  statement  that  the 
artistic  genius  finds  the  highest  triumph  of 
his  art  where  he  represents  the  ugly  objecti- 
fied, and  beauty  all-powerful  through  triumph 
over  evil.  Ethical  notions  and  metaphysical 
conceptions  here  lead  us  away  from  psychology 
proper,  however,  and  this  we  must  avoid. 

The  most  important  of  all  repressive  pains 
for  our  consideration,  however,  are  those 
which  arise  where  certain  mental  elements 
often  appear  in  definite  relations  of  succes- 
sion, the  usual  order  of  this  appearance 
remaining  unfulfilled.  Evidently  this  class 
of  repressive  pains  will  not  be  of  infrequent 
occurrence  in  our  experience,  for  they  depend 
upon  combinations  in  varied  orders  which  are 
easily  alterable,  and  which,  on  the  other  hand, 
are  grasped  with  such  difficulty  that  we  in 
our  weakness  cannot  for  a  moment  hope 
to  be  able  to  avoid  the  repressive  conflicts 


128  ESTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

they  engender.  We  should,  therefore,  expect 
to  find  some  recognition  of  occurrence  of  these 
pains  and  some  general  attempt  at  their  avoid- 
ance in  aesthetic  theory  and  practice.  It  is 
these  pains  which  make  up  the  very  usual 
form  of  ugliness  which  is  determined  by  the 
combinational  effect  of  many  disappointments 
of  expectancy,  each  painful,  in  too  small  a  de- 
gree, indeed,  to  be  emphatically  presented,  but 
for  all  that,  helping  to  make  up  an  aggregate 
of  undefinable  but  emphatic  disagreeableness. 

Let  me  quote  from  Schiller  again.  In  one 
of  his  interesting  and  suggestive  studies  he 
tells  us  that  "beauty  can  tolerate  nothing 
abrupt  nor  violent."  In  other  words,  if  an 
object  is  to  appear  beautiful  to  us  it  must  not 
bring  to  us  shocks  of  any  important  kind. 
The  lines,  the  forms,  the  colours,  the  sounds, 
which  we  find  in  nature,  resultant  as  they  are 
from  the  influence  of  cosmic  forces  in  conjunc- 
tion with  growth,  bring  to  us  certain  arrange- 
ments of  stimuli,  which,  though  complex 
beyond  our  power  of  analysis,  must  mould  our 


NEGATIVE   PKINCIPLES.  129 

nervous  system  into  preparation  for  the  recep- 
tion of  stimuli  in  corresponding  orders  and 
arrangements,  and  this  in  psychological  terms 
means  the  production  of  a  tendency  to  the 
rise  of  certain  special  mental  states  in  special 
orders  and  relations  to  one  another. 

If,  then,  nature  presents  to  us,  as  she  does, 
with  relative  infrequency,  objects  which  bring 
stimuli  in  relations  contrary  to  those  in  accord 
with  which  our  systems  have  been  moulded, 
we  should  expect  to  note  just  such  shocks  of 
repressive  pain  as  nature's  monsters  produce 
in  us,  quite  apart  from  the  active  pains  (of 
aversion  or  fear,  for  example)  which  they 
may  superinduce. 

In  our  productive  work,  it  clearly  would 
be  indicative  of  an  intelligence  far  above  that 
which  we  possess  if  we  did  not  find  ourselves 
too  often  bringing  about  combinations  of 
stimuli  which  violate  the  order  that  nature 
has  impressed  upon  us.^ 

1  The   reader    will   understand   from   what   I   have   said 
elsewhere  how  it  is  possible  for  a  person  to  gain  "  an  ac- 
K 


130  ESTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

Illustrations  here  crowd  upon  us.  All  of 
nature's  lines  are  affected  by  tlie  power  of 
gravitation.  It  seems  clear  to  me  that  the 
relative  grace  of  the  suspension-bridge  as 
generally  constructed  and  of  the  cantilever 
truss-bridge  is  principally  determined  by  the 
fact  that  the  catenary  curve  in  the  former 
case  presents  to  us  nature's  pendent  form, 
while  the  strutted  extensions  of  the  canti- 
lever bring  to  us  other  lines  than  those  in 
accord  with  which  she  has  educated  us.  As 
one's  eye  follows  the  lines  of  the  cantilever 
truss,  natural  organic  combinations  bring 
preparation  for  action  in  certain  directions. 
But  the  stimuli  to  these  activities  fail  when 
the  abrupt  and  rigid  lines  break  off  in  direc- 
tions which  nature  has  never  given  us;  the 
shocks  of  repressive  pain  that  result  produce 
that  sense  of  discomfort  which  we  express  by 
calling  the  work  ugly. 

quired  taste"  (an  acquired  pleasure  capacity)  which  will  in 
the  end  make  these  unnatural  forms  not  unpleasant  and  even 
enjoyable  through  appreciation  of  other  values  than  those  which 
are  natural. 


NEGATIVE    PRINCIPLES.  131 

One  who  stands  by  the  brink  of  Niagara, 
with  its  ever-flowing  lesson  in  the  curves  of 
gravity,  cannot  help  feeling  strongly  that  the 
lines  of  the  suspension-bridges  are  in  satis- 
factory harmony  with  the  scene,  but  that  the 
cantilever  bridge  makes  a  blot  upon  the  land- 
scape almost  as  unfortunate  as  the  rigid  forms 
of  the  factories  built  upon  the  river's  bank. 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  beauty  of  the  rocket's 
flight  is  also  largely  determined  by  the  sub- 
mission of  its  movements  to  the  laws  of 
gravity. 

The  same  principle  may  be  recognized  in 
visible  forms  quite  apart  from  their  contour 
lines.  The  relations  of  the  parts  in  the 
human  figure  vary  in  an  indefinite  number  of 
small  ways,  but  any  marked  disproportion  of 
parts  at  once  gives  us  the  shock  of  ugliness. 
It  is  comparatively  seldom  that  nature  brings 
these  positive  shocks,  although  often  the  men 
and  women  we  meet  show  little  of  positive 
beauty.  In  the  creative  representations  of 
man,  however,  nothing  is  easier  than  to  pro- 


132  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

duce  such  misempliasis  of  relations,  and  such 
unnaturalness  that  ugliness  in  whole  or  in 
part  is  induced. 

Even  more  delicate  are  the  relations  of 
colours.  "Is  it  not  strange,"  a  lover  of 
flowers  once  said  to  me,  "that  nature  does 
not  give  ugly  combinations  of  flowers  when 
it  is  so  easy  for  us  to  combine  them  in  an 
unsatisfactory  manner?"  This  commonplace 
observation  teaches  the  doctrine  here  dis- 
cussed. Nature,  through  the  influence  of  the 
prehistoric  past,  has  been  our  teacher,  and  to 
nature's  colourings  we  must  go  to  learn  what 
combinations  to  make  use  of  in  our  work  of 
rearrangement,  and,  if  we  may  so  speak,  of 
re-creation.  If  we  break  away  too  far  from 
her  guidance,  we  have  our  punishment  in  the 
shock  of  perceived  ugliness. 

When  we  turn  to  sound  relations  we  recog- 
nize the  disagreeableness  of  sudden  changes 
from  the  habitual  movements  in  music;  if, 
for  example,  some  unskilled  performer  strikes 
an  incorrect  note  in  a  known  progression,  or 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  133 

if  the  development  of  a  harmony  be  broken 
by  an  erroneous  chord. 

Here  we  find  ourselves  prepared  to  step 
away  from  nature's  teachings  to  the  more 
complex  regions  of  mental  effort,  which  de- 
pend upon  habits  artificially  formed,  if  we 
may  so  speak,  in  the  process  of  development. 
The  principle  will  be  recognized  as  the  same, 
however,  whether  the  pain  be  caused  by  breaks 
away  from  habitual  combinations,  produced 
by  nature's  wider  and  racial,  or  by  more 
narrow  and  individual,  influences. 

The  related  forms  which  our  race  through 
many  generations  of  experience  has  learned 
to  feel  to  be  most  satisfactory,  cannot  be 
lightly  disturbed  without  producing  painful 
distraction.  This  we  all  feel  in  those  lines 
on  which  practice  enables  us  to  judge  with 
discrimination.  The  mere  novice  objects  to 
a  Gothic  window  in  what  purports  to  be  a 
*'  classic  "  building.  The  more  highly  edu- 
cated student  at  once  revolts  against  a  faQade 
of  Corinthian  detail  massed  in  Doric  propor- 


134  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

tions  or  with  Ionic  intercolumniation ;  and 
this  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  has  learned 
by  observation  how  these  special  parts  have 
been  best  related  by  the  long  study  of  suc- 
cessive generations  in  the  past.  The  work 
of  one  who  disregards  this  racial  experience 
brings  to  the  expert  a  shock,  which  for  him 
makes  aesthetic  delight  impossible. 

As  I  have  noted  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
the  same  principle  holds  with  the  purist's 
judgment  in  all  art  work.  The  critical  stu- 
dent is  all  too  apt  to  create  within  himself, 
artificially,  petty  standards  which  when 
shocked  give  a  sense  of  ugliness  sufficiently 
predominant  to  prevent  him  from  appreciating 
the  wider  beauties  in  the  work  before  him. 

It  seems  to  me  that  we  have  shown  clearly 
that  in  repressive  pain  we  have  the  main 
source  of  ugliness,  and  we  are  led  to  the 
conclusion  that  it  is  most  important  to  avoid 
pains  of  repression  as  preliminary  to  the  pro- 
duction of  beauty. 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  135 

Now  I  wish  to  turn  to  the  consideration  of 
certain  negative  laws  of  great  importance, 
which  depend  upon  the  principles  just  dis- 
cussed. These  laws  in  a  number  of  cases  we 
shall  find  to  have  been  already  recognized,  but 
erroneously,  I  think,  as  positive  teachings 
of  the  contraries  of  those  principles  which 
should  rightly  be  emphasized. 

We  are  all  too  ready  to  fall  into  logical 
pitfalls  connected  with  incorrect  use  of  com- 
plementary opposites.  Experience  tells  us 
that  we  must  avoid  not  x  if  we  are  to  produce 
a  beautiful  object ;  x,  therefore,  is  fixed  upon 
as  the  basis  of  beauty. 

It  is  clear,  after  what  has  just  been  said, 
that  were  we  to  start  out  from  a  theoretical 
basis  we  should  be  inclined  to  hold  that  our 
safest  course  of  procedure  would  be  to  imitate 
nature,  sifting  out  her  especial  beauties,  or 
recombining  her  elements,  so  that  relatively 
permanent  pleasure  would  result  for  us;  for 
thus  we  most  easily  avoid  shocks  which  go 
so    far    to    produce    ugliness.      In   fact,    it 


136  ESTHETIC    PRINCIPLES. 

appears  that  this  is  what  the  great  mass 
of  artists  in  almost  all  lines  of  effort  do 
to-day,  and  what  they  always  have  done; 
and  it  was  this  observation,  so  far  as  we  can 
judge,  that  led  many  authorities  to  look  upon 
imitation  as  so  important  a  principle  of  art. 
It  is  apparent,  however,  that  imitation  is  a 
means  to  an  end  merely,  and  that  it  is  not 
possible  to  make  it  fundamental  for  all  art. 
It  appears  to  me  that  it  is  a  principle  of 
importance  rather  negatively  than  positively. 
It  guides  us  in  the  direction  in  which  beauty 
will  be  found,  and  far  outside  of  which  it 
cannot  be  found ;  but  that  it  gives  us  a  posi- 
tive basis  for  the  production  of  aBsthetic 
result,  I  think  untrue,  as  must  be  evident  to 
any  one  who  does  not  exclude  architecture 
from  the  realm  of  aesthetics. 

Our  true  principle  here  is  not  imitate 
nature,  but  is  this :  avoid  radical  departures 
from  nature,  for  such  departures  must  surely 
bring  to  us  the  shocks  which  produce  ugliness. 

Other  examples  of  the  same  logically  illicit 


r 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  137 


procedure,  and  of  the  consequent  misnaming 
of  principles,  are  not  wanting,  some  of  which 
deserve  mention. 

Freedom  from  shocks  implies  avoidance  of 
inharmonious  relations  ;  and  perhaps  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  observation  of  this  should 
have  raised  harmony  to  the  dignity  of  a  first 
principle,  notwithstanding  that  the  most  cur- 
sory examination  must  show  any  unprejudiced 
person  that  we  are  fairly  enveloped  in  a  world 
of  harmonies,  which  give  us  no  aesthetic  result 
at  all. 

So,  again,  uselessness,  unfitness,  abnormal 
departure  from  type,  must  be  eliminated  if 
painful  shocks  are  to  be  avoided ;  and  with- 
out such  avoidance  no  effect  of  beauty  can  be 
obtained.  From  this  source,  it  seems  to  me, 
have  arisen  the  doctrines  of  the  relation  to 
the  aesthetic  of  usefulness,  of  the  importance 
of  fitness,  of  the  necessity  of  conformity  to 
type. 

It  is  true,  indeed,  that  no  egregious  de- 
partures   from    our    typical    standards,    no 


138  AESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

marked  unfitness  in  the  object  presented,  nor 
any  emphases  of  qualities  which  are  hurtfuUy 
useless,  are  possible  without  producing  this 
pain.  But  it  is  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
truth  to  hold  that  departures  from  normal 
types  within  limits  are  non-aesthetic.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  just  such  departures  that  add 
piquancy  to  much  which  we  admire. 

It  is  equally  misleading  to  argue  that  the 
non-useful  cannot  be  beautiful,  or,  as  is  more 
often  the  case,  to  overestimate  the  importance 
of  the  recognition  of  the  useful  in  given  aes- 
thetic fields.  So  far  as  the  useful  can  be  con- 
sidered as  a  positive  principle,  it  is  covered  by 
the  principle  of  the  summation  of  associative 
pleasures,  which  we  shall  presently  consider. 
Perceived  usefulness  has  often  been  made 
an  essential  point  in  architecture.  Useful- 
ness truly  becomes  more  important  in  this 
than  in  other  arts ;  not,  however,  per  se,  but 
through  the  strong  emphasis  of  the  painful- 
ness  of  each  useless  feature  which  exists  to 
the  detriment  of  the  whole.    It  is  not  improb- 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  139 

able  that  the  superior  pleasure  obtained  from 
ancient  works  of  architecture  is  in  some 
degree  due  to  the  fact  that  they  have  lost 
their  capacity  to  shock  through  opposition 
to  the  immediate  needs.  The  limitations  of 
human  capacity  are  so  great  that  shocks  of 
this  kind  are  forced  upon  us  in  every  newly 
constructed  building,  made  to  serve  some  dis- 
tinct purpose,  however  great  be  the  skill  of 
the  designer.  To  be  sure,  each  use  may  add 
to  the  complex  pleasures  of  activities  asso- 
ciated with  the  use,  and  these  associative 
pleasures  will  be  cut  off  in  disappointment 
pains,  when  the  lack  of  this  usefulness  is 
noticed ;  but  here  again  it  is  the  non-assthetic 
effect  of  the  non-useful,  and  not  the  aesthetic 
effect  of  the  useful,  which  tells,  and  which 
forms  the  basis  of  the  so-called  principle. 

Mr.  Spencer  also  holds,  as  Emerson  held 
before  him,  that  the  useful  tends  to  become 
beautiful ;  but  so  far  as  this  is  true,  it  is  not 
because  of  the  usefulness  per  se.  It  seems 
much  more  naturally  explicable  as  one  of  the 


140  -SJSTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

phenomena  of  habit;  for,  as  is  well  known 
in  a  great  class  of  cases,  activities  which  have 
become  habitual  gain  for  themselves  pleasure 
capacities,  either  directly  or  associatively. 
Another  point  made  by  Mr.  Spencer  serves  to 
illustrate  our  contention.  Style,  he  thinks, 
depends  upon  the  reduction  of  friction  to  a 
minimum  in  the  chosen  vehicle.  But  surely 
this  is  merely  a  negative  principle,  —  a  con- 
dition preliminary  to  the  use  of  those  satis- 
factory forms  which  mark  a  good  style  in 
whatever  material  the  artist  works. 

If  the  reader  will  allow  me  another  illus- 
tration of  my  contention  from  the  works  of 
Mr.  Spencer,  I  think  one  may  be  found  in 
that  treatment  of  gracefulness,  adopted  by 
him,  which  makes  its  delights  dependent 
upon  adaptation  to  ends.  Grace  without  this 
adaptation  is,  of  course,  unattainable,  but 
that  is  merely  a  negative  description  of  its 
field.  If  Spencer's  position  were  correct,  we 
should  be  compelled  to  grant  the  quality  of 
gracefulness  to  a  perfectly  ordered  machine, 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  141 

and  to  shut  out  most  important  elements 
which  have  no  relation  to  fitness  whatever ; 
e.g.,  the  delight  which  we  gain  from  those 
flowing  curves  which  our  retentiveness  pict- 
ures for  us  in  and  through  movements,  the 
sympathetic  pleasures  which  Schiller  has  de- 
scribed as  dependent  upon  "beauty  of  form 
under  the  influence  of  freedom,"  without 
appearance  of  the  strife  and  conflict  which 
willed  actions  entail;  and  we  should  be  forced 
to  leave  out  of  account  many  other  elements ' 
of  associative  worth. 

Turning  in  another  direction,  it  appears 
that  the  doctrine  which  makes  the  expression 
of  truth  an  essential  principle  of  art  has  a 
similar  negative  basis.  Untruth,  in  all  the 
arts,  is  a  source  of  great  dissatisfaction ;  but 
this  merely  gives  us  the  negative  principle 
avoid  untruth!  it  gives  no  ground  whatever 
for  the  teaching  of  realism  that  the  pre- 
eminent aim  of  the  artist  should  be  the 
expression   of   truth. 

With  architectural  forms,  better  education 


142  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

teaches  the  observer  the  natural  action  of 
constructional  elements,  and  brings  about  un- 
easiness unless  there  is  evidence  of  their  con- 
sideration in  the  building-up  of  the  masses: 
it  is  natural,  therefore,  that  we  find  the  prin- 
ciple of  "  truth  "  constantly  reiterated  as  an 
especially  valuable  dictum  of  architectural 
aesthetics ;  but  for  all  that,  the  real  principle 
is  the  "avoidance  of  untruth." 

Here  we  may  mention  the  demand  for 
repose  in  architecture  and  in  the  plastic  arts 
in  general  as  another  negative  principle, 
founded  in  this  case  upon  our  appreciation  of 
nature's  law  of  gravity.  Repose  per  se  will 
not  bring  us  aesthetic  joy ;  but  without  it,  in 
the  cases  cited,  beauty  cannot  be  reached. 
The  building  must  be  felt  as  stable,  the 
human  figure  must  "  stand  upon  its  feet,"  or 
be  poised  in  a  position  it  could  occupy  in 
nature  without  continued  strain;  but  these 
conditions  may  well  be  fulfilled  without  result 
of  aesthetic  moment. 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  143 

Let  me  illustrate  this  general  point  once 
again.  Growth  is  a  law  of  nature.  Every- 
where around  us  we  see  forms  which  are  of 
marked  type  indeed,  but  which  present  evi- 
dences of  developing  change  in  non-essentials. 
Art  works  which  present  evidence  of  such 
growth  gain  great  power  through  sympa- 
thetic harmony  with  nature  and  with  our 
own  developing  selves.  The  evidence  of  this 
verisimilitude  of  life,  perhaps  unanalyzed  and 
not  definitely  recognized,  probably  adds  much, 
for  example,  to  the  attractiveness  of  the 
Gothic  cathedral,  and  emphasizes  the  poetry 
of  the  structures  of  Northern  Italy.  Musical 
forms  also  are  especially  fertile  in  producing 
these  living  effects.  Music  which  is  mechani- 
cally produced  can  never  give  full  satisfac- 
tion. 

But  surely  it  is  not  in  evidence  that  the 
expression  of  growth  or  of  life  can  be  held 
to  be  the  fundamental  in  aesthetics,  as  some 
would  have  us  believe.  At  the  most,  the 
effects   produced    by  the    representation    of 


144  -ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

these  qualities  can  be  but  an  adjunct  to  other 
means  of  impression.  For  certain  people, 
however,  who  become  accustomed  to  look  for 
them,  they  may  be  demanded  when  absent, 
for  the  purpose  of  eliminating  a  painful  need, 
and  may  thus  become  for  them  necessary 
to  aesthetic  result.  This,  however,  shows  no 
proof  that  they  are  the  essential  to  aBsthetic 
effect  in  general. 

The  unities  which  the  Greeks  made  so 
essential  in  the  development  of  the  drama 
gain  their  force  negatively,  for  without  such 
unities  distractions  must  be  felt  from  the  line 
of  thought  in  which  the  poet  would  guide  his 
hearer.  That  this  is  true  is  shown  by  the 
lessened  demand  felt  for  the  unities  of  time 
and  place  in  the  drama  of  modern  times ;  for, 
through  historical  study,  the  grasp  of  eras 
has  become  as  common  to-day  as  that  of  in- 
dividual lives  ;  and,  with  us,  movements  from 
place  to  place,  widely  separated,  are  matters 
of  usual  occurrence. 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  145 

Let  US  now  turn  from  the  consideration 
of  the  avoidance  of  repressive  pains  to  the 
second  division  of  our  principle  as  relating 
to  pain;  that  is  to 

(B)   The  Avoidance  of  Pains   of  Excessive 
Functioning. 

So  important  is  this  avoidance  that  works 
of  art  are  in  all  cases  developed  on  lines  in 
which  excesses  may  be  shunned  with  little 
dijfficulty.  So  soon  as  the  work  of  the  artist 
begins  to  tire  us  we  must  be  able  to  turn  away 
from  its  consideration.  The  stimulus  given 
must  directly  or  indirectly  be  under  our  con- 
trol, so  that  we  may  grasp  the  opportunity 
for  enjoyment  when,  and  only  when,  we  are  in 
the  mood  for  the  special  pleasures  involved. 
There  is  no  more  certain  manner  of  destroy- 
ing our  appreciation  of  any  special  art  work — 
that  is,  of  making  it  non-aesthetic  for  us — than 
by  compelling  attention  to  it  when  we  are 
weary  in  the  direction  of  its  peculiar  stimulus. 


146  -ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

Here  we  have  a  lesson  for  the  teacher  of 
the  young. 

As  we  have  seen,  a  certain  class  of  repres- 
sive pains  are  naturally  avoided,  and  with 
pains  of  hypernormal  activity  nature  aids  us 
also  very  materially,  for  we  tend  automati- 
cally to  prevent  excess  by  the  shifting  of 
attention.  Concentration  and  permanence  of 
attention  upon  one  subject  are  certain  to  be- 
come speedily  painful ;  indeed,  because  of  the 
reflex  effort  towards  avoidance,  they  are, 
strictly  speaking,  impossible  under  normal 
conditions,  except  by  means  of  a  cultivated 
habit,  and  then  only  through  the  artifice  of 
"  looking  around  the  subject,"  so  to  speak ; 
of  allowing  the  various  details  to  be  viewed 
in  the  mental  focus  without  letting  go  the 
primal  theme  which  is  held  in  associative 
trains.  As  avoidance  of  pains  of  this  type  is 
comparatively  easy  and  almost  automatic,  it 
is  natural  to  find  that  theoretic  consideration 
has  dealt  less  with  them  than  with  those  re- 
pressive pains,  not  naturally  avoided,  which 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  147 

are  the  result  of  imexpectedly  encountered  pit- 
falls, only  to  be  missed  by  much  prevision. 
That  excesses  must  be  shunned  is  taken  for 
granted.  This  is  the  principle  involved  in 
the  oft-repeated  Aristotelian  emphasis  of  the 
necessity  of  adopting  a  mean  between  ex- 
tremes. 

Taking  the  realm  of  pain  as  a  whole, 
we  may  state  our  principle  as  that  of  "the 
avoidance  of  the  ugly,"  as  we  have  done  at 
the  opening  of  this  section.  It  is  by  this 
process  that  the  artist  gains  the  broad  back- 
ground which  he  must  win  before  he  can 
realize  his  ideal  of  beauty.  His  results  must 
give  many  a  pleasurable  element,  and,  as  we 
shall  presently  see,  some  special  points  of  in- 
tense interest,  but  he  cannot  hope  to  make 
the  wide  mental  field  which  his  work  arouses 
altogether  pleasurable ;  the  most  that  he  can 
hope  for  is  that  it  shall  be  devoid  of  elements 
of  possible  painfulness. 

It  is  in  this  direction    that    the    science 


148  JESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

of  cesihetics  will  always  produce  its  most 
valuable  effects.  Its  work  for  art  must 
always  be  to  a  great  extent  negative.  If 
it  teach  us  what  have  been  the  principles 
which  advancing  art  has  shown,  it  is  to 
enable  the  artist  of  our  time  to  avoid  care- 
lessly putting  out  effort  in  directions  opposed 
to  these  principles  which  without  being  recog- 
nized have  guided  the  artist  in  the  past. 
If  •  it  show  us  some  necessary  relation  of 
the  phenomena  with  which  the  artist  deals, 
it  is  that  he  may  learn  not  to  waste  effort 
in  vain  endeavour  to  treat  his  subjects  in  a 
manner  contrary  to  these  necessities.  The 
anatomist  teaches  the  artist  what  the  rela- 
tions of  bone  and  muscle  and  tendon  are  in 
the  physical  framework,  so  that  with  help 
from  this  source  of  knowledge  he  may  create 
his  ideal  form  without  the  dissatisfactions 
which  go  with  the  presentation  of  false  ana- 
tomical relations.  The  mathematician  teaches 
perspective,  that  the  artist  may  naturally  avoid 
what  would  be  disturbing  anti-perspective  er- 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  149 

rors,  into  which  he  might  fall  in  his  enthu- 
siastic concentration  upon  the  expression  of 
his  ideal. 

Science  in  truth  must  always  follow 
where  creative  genius  leads,  in  whatever 
direction  it  is  developed;  but  for  all  that, 
science  has  a  most  valuable  function  to 
perform  in  relation  to  art. 

The  importance  of  this  elimination  of 
the  ugly  which  scientific  sesthetics  enables 
us  to  make  will  be  acknowledged  when  it 
is  considered  that  special  interest  in  the 
work  of  art  as  at  first  presented  may  very 
easily  blind  one  to  many  elements  in  the 
work.  If  these  latter  are  displeasing,  they 
will  become  effective  to  cast  the  work  out 
of  the  realm  of  aesthetics  as  soon  as  the  in- 
tenser  interests  pall  upon  us. 

All  men  naturally  follow  out  the  general 
maxim  here  discussed,  and  it  is  to  a  great 
extent  through  accumulation  of  such  elimi- 
nations of  ugliness  that  our  standards  of 
artistic    excellence   have  been    reached.     On 


160  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

general  lines  the  bad  has  been  sifted  out 
or  allowed  to  fall  into  the  background  as 
time  has  passed,  and  the  noble  and  beau- 
tiful has  been  left  unaltered  because  it  has 
been  felt  to  be  too  satisfactory  to  require 
change. 

Most  of  us  are  wont  thoughtlessly  to  look 
back  at  the  architectural  forms  of  Greece  as 
the  creation  of  her  golden  age.  But  it  is 
clear  to  the  student  that  those  splendid 
achievements  embody  the  thought  of  many 
generations,  and  even  of  diverse  races,  rather 
than  ^that  of  a  special  era  of  a  few  genera- 
tions* continuance.  Generation  after  genera- 
tion had  felt  the  same  needs  in  their  worship, 
had  built  and  rebuilt  temples  as  their  inferior 
materials  and  workmanship,  or  the  more 
actively  destructive  forces  of  nature,  com- 
pelled. Each  new  work  had  made  it  possible 
to  eliminate  some  form  which  had  been  dis- 
pleasing in  the  last  effort,  to  alter  some  un- 
satisfactory surface,  to  change  some  deficient 
shadow  depth.     In  the  final  results  we  see 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  151 

the  record  of  untold  endeavour  towards  the 
attainment  of  beauty,  mainly  successful 
because  time  and  experiment  have  effected 
the  complete  elimination  of  the  ugly.  The 
growth  of  Gothic  forms,  of  which  we  have 
better  knowledge,  tells  the  same  story  of 
experiment  and  partial  failure ;  of  renewed 
effort  with  avoidance  of  the  elements  which 
made  the  last  work  unsatisfactory ;  until  we 
reach  the  glory  of  the  best  Gothic,  less  perfect 
than  the  Greek  indeed,  as  it  expressed  the 
demand  of  a  race  impelled  by  less  unity  of 
feeling,  and  as  its  growth  was  forced  within 
the  relatively  short  period  of  perhaps  a  thou- 
sand years. 

Too  great  difficulty  of  appljnng  eliminative 
experiment  may  indeed  be  looked  upon  as  a 
bar  to  development.  The  Egyptians,  to  whom 
the  expression  of  permanence  seems  to  have 
given  the  greatest  satisfaction,  built  in  such 
ponderous  material  and  so  durably  that  change 
of  form  for  them  was  a  matter  of  far  greater 
difficulty  than  with  the  Greeks,  whose  mate- 


152  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

rials  were  less  permanent  and  mucli  more 
easily  worked.  This  difference  doubtless 
accounts  largely  for  the  fact  that  we  find 
Greece  in  a  relatively  short  time  gaining  pos- 
session of  such  a  flower  of  architectural  art 
as  had  failed  to  spring  from  the  stem  that 
had  grown  for  long  ages  in  the  climes  of 
Northern  Africa.  It  is  no  little  comfort  for 
us  in  these  restless  times  to  see  how  few  of 
our  buildings  are  constructed  to  endure  in  the 
future.  If,  with  our  changing  needs,  we  have 
little  ability  to  develop  an  architectural  art, 
at  least  our  descendants  will  not  fear  to  sweep 
the  greater  part  of  our  work  from  the  face  of 
the  earth. 

The  possibility  of  making  these  elimina- 
tions is  curtailed  by  everything  which  tends 
to  emphasize  fixity.  The  rules  of  the  schools, 
valuable  as  aids  to  the  student,  always  carry 
with  them  the  danger  of  repression  of  "  the 
elimination  of  ugliness."  Note  how  the  rules 
of  counterpoint  stood  in  opposition  to  the 
development  of  music ;  how  the  establishment 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  163 

of  the  "orders"  in  Roman  architecture  struck 
the  life  out  of  the  Greek  architectural  devel- 
opment; how  the  dictionary  thwarts  the 
natural  development  of  euphony  in  lan- 
guage. 

We  see  the  main  principle  enunciated  again 
in  our  own  times  and  in  our  own  homes. 
Comparatively  few  of  us  can  fill  our  homes 
with  objects  that  remain  for  us,  or  for  our 
friends,  permanently  beautiful.  We  may  be 
able  to  have  a  gem  here  or  there,  but  that  is 
all.  Still  we  may  avoid  "shocks,"  and  in 
that  avoidance  lies  much  of  the  power  of  a 
cultivated  mind  in  architect  or  householder. 
To  this  is  surely  due  the  beauty  that  grows 
into  the  homes  of  those  whose  culture  is 
handed  down  with  the  building  that  passes 
from  one  generation  of  refined  people  to 
another.  The  inhabitants  learn  to  brush 
away  the  "  shocks."  The  inharmonious  lines 
and  forms  are  covered;  the  harmonious 
lines  and  forms  are  retained;  gradually  and 
unwittingly  they  mould  their   surroundings 


154  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

to  relations  which  do  not  clash ;  and  in  such 
an  environment  the  smallest  beauties  tell. 

In  looking  over  other  art  fields,  where  the 
medium  of  expression  has  been  in  less  per- 
manent material,  it  is  difficult  to  realize  how 
much  work  has  been  done  which  has  been  cast 
aside  because  of  inferior  worth,  has  been 
allowed  to  deteriorate,  and  thus  has  been  lost. 
It  were  much  more  difficult  did  we  not  realize 
that  our  race  is  in  the  main  not  far  removed 
from  those  that  time  has  swept  away  before 
us,  and  did  we  not  see  this  process  of  produc- 
tion and  elimination  going  on  around  us  to- 
day. Practically  a  vast  proportion  of  the 
pictures  preserved  in  the  great  galleries  of 
Europe  have  been  eliminated  from  the  aes- 
thetic. We  go  to  these  vast  treasuries  to 
study  a  few  pieces  of  work  ;  all  the  others  are 
passed  by  as  if  they  did  not  exist.  If  we 
could  reproduce  the  sudden  barbaric  intrusions 
of  the  past,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  few  pre- 
cious gems  which  time  has  taught  us  to  value 
supremely  would  be  hurried  off  to  places  of 


NEGATIVE   PRINCIPLES.  155 

safety,  while  all  else  might  readily  be  elimi- 
nated by  vandal  destruction  or  neglect. 

It  is  evident,  of  course,  that  the  attainment 
of  an  unpainful  background  in  itself  will  not 
suffice  to  bring  about  sesthetic  result.  Not 
only  must  the  artist  avoid  pain  in  indifference, 
but  before  gaining  the  pleasure-field  he  must 
move  beyond  this  field  of  indifference.  This 
brings  us  to  our  second  division,  which,  how- 
ever, we  may  pass  over  lightly,  for  indiffer- 
ence, as  we  all  recognize,  may  be  avoided  only 
in  the  directions  of  pain  and  pleasure.  Pain, 
as  we  have  just  seen,  is  also  to  be  avoided  by 
the  artist.  The  attainment  of  pleasure  is, 
therefore,  the  only  means  by  which  we  can 
step  away  from  indifference  in  a  direction 
that  wUl  be  not  unaesthetic,  and  we  are  there- 
fore at  once  brought  to  the  consideration  of 
the  positive  field  of  aesthetics,  to  which  we 
turn  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

ALGEDONIC   ESTHETICS.      II. 

Positive  ^Esthetic  Principles. 

In  the  chapter  which  has  preceded  this  we 
have  considered  the  preliminary  steps  that 
must  be  taken  by  the  artist  who  aims  towards 
the  attainment  of  beauty,  and  now  we  must 
try  to  discover  the  positive  laws  which  lead  to 
effectiveness  in  aesthetic  endeavour,  or,  in  the 
words  of  our  aesthetic  theory,  must  look  for 
the  means  and  methods  that  are  necessary  to 
the  production  of  a  pleasure-field  which  shall 
he  relatively  permanent.  It  will  be  convenient 
in  our  discussion  to  treat  separately  (1st)  the 
production  of  pleasure  itself,  before  consider- 
ing (2d)  the  means  adopted  in  the  attempt 
to  iQdi^ch.  permanency  of  pleasure-field. 

166 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  157 


I. 

First,  then,  as  to  the  production  of  pleas- 
ure. We  have  already  seen  that  pains  are 
practically  produced  in  two  ways,  and  so  it  is 
also  with  our  pleasures ;  they,  too,  are  practi- 
cally produced  in  two  ways,  and  are  conse- 
quently naturally  divided  into  two  great 
classes.  We  have,  first,  the  pleasures  which 
arise  with  rest  after  strain,  with  relief  from 
pain;  and,  second,  those  that  arise  in  con- 
nection with  active  functioning,  in  connec- 
tion with  vigorous,  healthful  exercise  of  our 
faculties. 

The  pleasures  of  rest  after  labour,  or  relief 
from  pain,  as  we  have  already  seen,  although 
really  to  be  considered  as  a  subclass  under  the 
pleasures  of  activity,  are  in  practice  separable 
from  them,  because  they  are  reached  in  prac- 
tice by  distinct  methods.  Unquestionably,  use 
is  made  of  them  in  the  arts  that  deal  with 
phenomena  of  succession.  It  is  no  slight 
pleasure,  for  instance,  that  we  obtain  in  music 


158  iESTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

by  the  introduction  of  a  calm,  restful  move- 
ment following  upon  a  train  of  intense  and 
vigorous  passages  calling  for  our  active  atten- 
tion. But,  on  the  whole,  these  pleasures  do 
not  form  an  element  of  marked  importance  in 
aesthetic  work,  and  especially  for  the  reason 
that  they  are  so  dependent  upon  the  existence 
of,  and  are  usually  so  inseparably  connected 
with,  anterior  pains.  We  may  pass  on,  there- 
fore, without  fmrther  examination  in  this  di- 
rection, to  the  consideration  of  the  pleasures 
connected  with  the  vigorous  exercise  of  our 
faculties. 

In  our  second  chapter  we  saw  that  the  rela- 
tion of  rest  to  pleasure  seems  to  teach  us  that 
pleasure  is  due  to  a  use  of  surplus  stored  force 
which  has  been  accumulated  in  the  organ 
which  is  called  into  activity  in  coincidence 
with  the  element  of  consciousness  that  is 
pleasant. 

Now  there  are  several  means  by  which  this 
use  of  surplus  energy  may  be  brought  about, 
and  if  the  hedonic  aesthetic  theory  be  true, 


r 


POSITIVE    PKINCIPLES.  159 


the  study  of  these  means  should  lead  us  to 
the  recognition  of  certain  principles  of  aes- 
thetics which  depend  solely  upon  these  means 
adopted  in  the  production  of  pleasure.  These 
several  methods  of  pleasure  production  evi- 
dently may  be  used  at  one  and  the  same  time, 
but  it  is  desirable  for  us  here  to  treat  them 
in  isolation. 

First,  we  should  expect  that  a  mental  ele- 
ment which  has  often  arisen  in  consciousness, 
but  which  has  for  some  time  been  absent, 
would  bring  pleasure  when  it  does  appear; 
and  this  because  its  organic  coincident  will  be 
rested  and  vigorous  and  because  there  will 
therefore  result  a  use  of  surplus  energy  when 
it  does  act.  Examples  of  this  will  easily 
occur  to  the  reader;  the  taste  of  sugar,  to 
which  we  have  become  accustomed,  but  of 
which  we  for  a  time  have  been  deprived 
under  medical  advice ;  the  appearance  of  the 
face  of  a  friend  who  has  ordinarily  been  a 
daily  companion,  but  who  has  been  away  from 
us  for  some  unusual  time. 


160  ^ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

The  principle  of  aesthetics  here  presented 
is  the  principle  of  contrast.  Contrast  in  any 
region  of  mental  effect  involves  the  presence 
of  mental  elements  that  have  not  been  in 
consciousness  in  the  late  past.  It  involves 
the  action  of  organs  that  have  not  been 
active  during  the  immediately  preceding  mo- 
ments. Gradations  in  sense  effect  or  in 
thought  transitions  are  mental  movements, 
which  imply  the  gradual  coming  into  action 
of  the  organs  which  are  successively  the  cen- 
tres of  activity.  Contrast  eliminates  all  gra- 
dations; it  involves  the  action  of  organs, 
which  through  mere  rest  have  become  well 
prepared  for  activity,  and  which,  therefore, 
produce  pleasurable  activity  when  stimulated. 

That  contrast  is  an  important  means  to  the 
attainment  of  aesthetic  effect  is  recognized  by 
all ;  indeed,  it  is  not  infrequently  overvalued, 
^'9-y  hy  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  who  calls  it  an 
essential  requisite  to  all  beauty;  But  our 
theory  would  teach  that  contrasts  are  not 
aesthetic  essentials,  because  pleasure  can  be 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  •      161 

reached  without  contrast  by  mere  increase 
of  vividness,  as  we  shall  presently  see.  For 
all  that,  it  must  be  granted  that  the  prin- 
ciple is  of  the  widest  application,  and  a 
most  available  one  for  the  guidance  of  the 
artist.  It  must  be  noted,  however,  that 
very  strong  contrasts  cannot  be  used  without 
"the  greatest  caution ;  they  give  powerful  ef- 
fects, but  effects  that  are  rapidly  exhaustive, 
and,  therefore,  they  must  in  general  be 
avoided.  To  this  we  refer  later  under  the 
consideration  of  permanency. 

Now  let  us  consider  a  second  means  of 
pleasure  production  closely  allied  to  the  one 
just  studied.  When  a  mental  element  which 
is  often  occurring  in  certain  connections  is 
inhibited,  as  they  say  technically,  i.e.,  is  pre- 
vented in  some  manner  from  arising  in  con- 
sciousness, then  upon  its  reappearance  we  shall 
have  it  pleasurably  presented  because,  by  the 
very  process  of  the  inhibition  of  its  organ's 
activity,  surplus  energy  has  been  stored 
up  in  this  latter  and  this   surplus  force  is 

M 


162  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

called  out  when  the  organ  again  acts.  "We 
have  already  discussed  this  form  of  pleasure 
production  in  the  last  chapter,  where  we 
showed  why  and  to  what  extent  it  is  permis- 
sible to  encourage  repressive  pains  in  aesthetic 
effects,  for  these  repressive  pains  are  due  to 
the  inhibitions  we  now  speak  of.  We  there 
saw  that  these  pains  may  be  allowed,  because 
they  serve  as  an  index  of  the  fact  that  we 
have  reached  the  limit  of  highest  pleasure- 
getting  in  connection  with  the  mental  element 
which  will  appear  when  the  repression  disap- 
pears; with  this  disappearance  of  repression 
the  mental  state  which  has  been  repressed 
recurs  with  full  pleasure.  As  we  then  said, 
"Dependent  as  such  transformations  from 
pain  to  pleasure  are  upon  the  succession  of 
psychic  states,  we  should  look  for  notable 
practical  exemplifications  of  them  in  arts  that 
deal  especially  with  phenomena  of  succession, 
i.e.,  in  music  and  in  literature.  In  music  we 
have  example  in  the  delayed  resolution  of  a 
chord  which  is  allowable  even  to  the  point 


r 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  163 


of  painfulness.  In  literary  work  we  have 
example  in  those  everyday  complications  of 
plot  which  delay  the  consummation  longed 
for,  and  finally  reached." 

The  principle  under  discussion  becomes 
important  in  another  direction.  If  there 
arise,  by  suggestion  from  the  expressions  of 
another,  trains  of  thought  which  are  nor- 
mally connected  with  other  secondary  trains, 
but  if  by  skilful  management  the  arousal  of 
these  secondary  trains  be  prevented,  then  we 
have  a  condition  of  artificial  inhibition  which 
will  result  in  pleasure-getting  whenever  the 
secondary  trains  are  allowed  to  appear. 

Such,  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  process  in  the 
delicate  play  of  wit. 

In  what  is  usually  called  the  "  ludicrous  " 
we  also  use  this  means  of  pleasure  produc- 
tion, although  much  of  the  effect  in  such 
cases  is  dependent  upon  sudden  transitions, 
in  the  lines  of  ordinary  association,  from 
mental  processes  which  involve  effort  to  more 
habitual   processes   where  the   same   energy 


164  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

will  produce  greater  effects;  i.e.,  hypernor- 
mal  stimulation,  which  we  shall  presently 
discuss  more  fully. 

Of  course,  we  can  but  touch  upon  this  sub- 
ject here ;  but  I  think  it  can  be  shown  that 
while  other  sources  of  pleasure-getting  are 
made  use  of  in  various  ways,  together  with 
the  action  above  described,  this  latter  is  the 
characteristic  movement  in  what  is  usually 
called  the  "ludicrous";  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  it  serves  well  to  harmonize  the  opposi- 
tions of  the  many  thinkers  who  have  at- 
tempted analysis  of  this  mental  state.  Those 
cases  of  the  ludicrous  which  seem  to  involve 
little  except  surprise  are  explicable  on  the 
ground  that  the  surprise  involves  attention 
and  expectation  of  important  outcome :  when 
the  unimportance  of  the  object  or  action  is  per- 
ceived, the  relaxation  of  attention  results  in 
the  same  powerful  overflow  into  the  channels 
of  ordinary  activity.  The  easy  and  marked 
"  step  from  the  sublime  to  the  ludicrous  "  is 
also  thus  explicable,  as  is  also  the  enjoyment 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  165 

we  receive  when  we  see  a  dignified  person 
suddenly  take  up  the  actions  characteristic 
of  purposeless  childhood,  —  as  when  a  man's 
hat  is  suddenly  carried  away  by  the  wind. 

It  cannot  be  claimed  that  all  such  transi- 
tions, from  mental  processes  involving  effort 
to  others  where  the  same  energy  will  produce 
greater  effect,  as  are  above  described  are 
ludicrous,  for  thought  trains  of  discovery  and 
invention  are  not  infrequently  of  this  nature, 
and  to  them  surely  the  word  "ludicrous" 
cannot  be  applied.  Introspection  seems  to 
tell  me,  however,  that  the  mental  conditions 
in  the  two  cases  are  very  closely  allied.  We 
have  a  tendency  under  such  circumstances  to 
laugh,  or  at  least  to  smile,  under  the  pleas- 
urable excitement ;  and  we  occasionally  speak 
of  the  resultant  as  a  "  happy  thought."  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  the  difference,  at  first 
one  of  degree  rather  than  of  kind,  has  become 
marked  because  the  more  emphatic  and  fuller 
state  produced  in  us  by  what  we  term  the 
"ludicrous"    has    become    indissolubly    con- 


166  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

nected  with  what  Kant  describes  as  "the 
sudden  transformation  of  a  tense  expectation 
into  nothing." 

And  now  to  return  to  the  subject  of  wit 
proper.  The  wit,  properly  speaking,  plays 
around  his  subject,  avoiding  the  more  usual 
outcome  of  the  train  of  his  thought,  but  lead- 
ing that  of  his  hearer  close  to  this  normal 
resultant,  until,  when  it  may  be  supposed 
that  all  the  organs  connected  with  the  nor- 
mal outcome  are  fully  prepared  for  action,  he 
turns  the  thought  train  in  the  direction  which 
is  effective  for  pleasure.  The  stimulation  of 
the  well-nourished  organs,  which  the  previous 
inhibition  had  thus  involved,  is  followed  by 
the  burst  of  pleasure-giving  activity  which 
irradiates  the  system,  and  expands  its  sur- 
plus energy  in  the  pleasurable  exercise  of 
laughter.  These  exercises  of  laughter  are 
pleasurable  in  such  cases  because  they,  too, 
involve  the  action  of  rested  organs.  The  more 
serious  aspect  of  things,  from  which  we  turn  to 
the  perception  of  the  ludicrous,  involves  par- 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  167 

tial  if  not  total  quiescence  in  all  those  organs 
which  are  notably  active  when  we  laugh. 

Puns  and  plays  upon  words  give  delight  in 
the  same  way,  as  do  also  the  delicious  verbal 
misunderstandings  of  children.  My  little 
daughter  once  asked  what  was  meant  by 
Anglo-Saxon,  and  having  been  told  that  the 
word  indicated  a  mixed  race  descended  from 
Angles  and  Saxons,  she  answered,  "Well,  I 
suppose  I  shall  understand  it  some  day;  I 
have  not  yet  come  to  Saxons  in  my  geometry, 
but  I  have  studied  about  angles."  She  ob- 
tained no  delight  in  the  saying.  For  the  lis- 
teners, however,  the  sound  angle  had  brought 
about  readiness  for  activity  in  the  organs  of 
many  trains  of  thought  connected  with  geo- 
metrical forms;  but  the  added  term  Saxon 
had  kept  the  attention  completely  in  other 
directions ;  when  the  thought  was  turned  to 
the  geometrical  trains,  however,  by  the  child's 
naive  remark,  the  well-prepared  organs  re- 
sponded with  pleasurable  consciousness. 

It  must  ever  be  remembered,  however,  that 


168  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

the  wit  and  he  who  deals  with  the  ludicrous 
tread  on  dangerous  ground.  The  clown  per- 
chance may  not  cause  laughter,  but  may  dis- 
appoint us  so  painfully  that  irritation  results. 
Apart  from  the  danger  that  the  witticism  may 
cut  too  deep,  there  is  the  danger  that  the 
repressed  activity  may  force  itself  upon  the 
attention  of  the  hearer  before  it  is  designed  to 
appear.  In  this  case  the  course  of  thought 
which  is  intended  to  lead  up  to  the  latter 
becomes  obstructive  to  the  known  resultant, 
and  the  consequence  will  be  a  sense  of  weari- 
ness ;  this  is  exemplified,  for  instance,  in  the 
"  flatness  "  of  old  jokes.  Further,  there  is  the 
danger  that  the  play  around  the  subject  may 
develop  trains  of  so  much  interest  that  the 
change  of  thought  will  produce  a  shock  power- 
ful and  painful  enough  to  overbalance  the 
pleasure  led  up  to.  We  all  realize  how  dan- 
gerous it  is  to  treat  lightly  subjects  which 
may  be   of   sacred  interest  to   others. 

A  third  means  of   pleasure  attainment  is 
found  in  mere  vividness  of  presentation  after 


POSITIVE   PKINCIPLES.  169 

normal  absence  from  consciousness,  the  sur- 
plus stored  force  being  brought  into  use  simply 
by  unusually  powerful  activity  of  normally 
efficient   organs. 

Vividness  of  impression  is  a  well-recognized 
means  of  producing  aesthetic  result  in  its 
cruder  form.  Barbaric  art  shows  this  dis- 
tinctly, and  the  art  of  the  masses,  even  in  our 
day,  makes  use  of  the  same  means.  Vivid 
colouring  and  contrasts,  startling  forms  and 
combinations,  vivacious  rhythms,  loudness  of 
sound  as  in  martial  music ;  all  these  are  com- 
mon tools  for  the  popular  artist.  But  we  here 
tread  on  ground  dangerous  to  permanency; 
for  hypernormal  activity,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
the  basis  of  pain  as  well  as  of  pleasure,  and 
pleasure  which  is  determined  by  this  alone 
must  be  of  a  very  ephemeral  character.  The 
surplus  stored  force  is  soon  used  up,  and  if  the 
unusually  vigorous  activity  continues  pain 
must  result.  So  it  happens  that  in  the  higher 
art  this  crude  means  of  producing  aesthetic 
effect  is  not  prominent. 


170  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

In  a  more  delicate  form,  however,  we  do 
find  it  of  service  to  higher  art  in  the  stimula- 
tion by  varied  means  of  the  same  activities  at 
the  same  time,  thus  producing  the  vividness 
which  goes  with  hypernormal  stimulation. 
The  principle  here  involved  is  that  of  "  har- 
mony" or  the  "unification  of  the  manifold," 
which  is  widely  recognized  as  of  the  highest 
importance  in  aesthetics.  Harmony  implies 
the  existence  of  some  common  quality  in  two 
diverse  mental  objects. 

If  this  principle  were  not  over-emphasized 
by  high  authorities,  it  would  be  unnecessary 
perhaps  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that,  al- 
though wide  in  its  bearings,  it  cannot  be  uni- 
versal as  the  cause  of  all  beauty.  Fechner, 
who  certainly  makes  as  much  of  the  "unity 
of  the  manifold  "as  is  legitimate,  acknowl- 
edges this  (see  p.  42  of  his  Vorschule,  where 

he  mentions  several  instances  to  which  it  is 

• 

not  possible  to  give  this  explanation).  We  are 
evidently  surrounded  by  appearances  of  unity 
in  manifoldness  that  do  not  impress  us  with 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  171 

sufficient  pleasure  to  give  the  objects  produc- 
ing them  the  quality  of  beauty,  the  slight 
pleasure  which  they  give  being  overwhelmed. 
On  the  other  hand,  many  beautiful  objects  ap- 
peal to  us  in  which  we  can  trace  no  distinct 
element  of  this  unification.  Esthetic  effect, 
indeed,  as  we  shall  see,  implies  more  than 
the  vague  gentle  pleasure  which  the  unity 
of  the  manifold,  as  it  usually  appears,  can 
produce. 

The  principle  of  duplication  of  stimulations, 
of  which  the  unity  of  the  manifold  is  a  spe- 
cial instance,  is,  none  the  less,  a  most  impor- 
tant one  for  aesthetics.  As  Mr.  Sully  says : 
"  To  wake  up  to  a  resemblance  between  two 
things  hitherto  kept  apart  in  the  mind  is 
always  an  agreeable  experience  "  ;  and  again, 
"The  feeling  of  satisfaction  which  accompa- 
nies the  full  reinstatement  of  the  idea  or  idea- 
complex  arises  from  the  identification  of  this 
with  the  partially  developed  representation 
that  has  been  present  throughout  the  proc- 
ess."    Throughout   the  whole  field  of   the 


172  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

"higher"  aesthetics,  —  i.e.,  of  that  which 
deals  with  the  delights  arising  from  the  more 
delicate  play  of  mood  and  thought,  —  this 
means  of  pleasure  production  is  most  impor- 
tant. 

On  the  whole,  I  think  it  must  be  granted 
that  the  mass  of  aesthetic  pleasures  is  reached 
by  slightly  vivid  presentations  in  varied  direc- 
tions, but,  as  it  has  just  been  noted,  this  very 
vividness  leads  to  loss  of  pleasure.  How  then 
shall  pleasure  permanency  be  reached,  is  our 
natural  query,  and  this  furnishes  the  subject- 
matter  of  our  second  division. 


n. 

We  have  already  noted  three  points ;  (1st) 
that  vividness  of  impression  is  an  impor- 
tant soiurce  of  pleasure-getting,  but  (2d)  that 
the  avoidance  of  continuity  of  vivid  presenta- 
tion of  any  one  set  of  elements  is  a  necessity 
if  pain  is  to  be  avoided.  But  it  is  clear  (3d) 
that  the  shifting  to  avoid  continuity  brings 


r 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  173 


about  those  conditions  where  absence  of  a 
mental  element  from  consciousness  for  an 
unusual  time,  suffices  to  make  it  pleasurable 
when  it  appears.  If,  then,  a  permanent 
pleasure-field  is  to  be  reached,  a  vivid  "focus," 
if  we  may  be  allowed  to  use  this  term,  is  im- 
portant in  our  field  of  consciousness,  but  this 
focus  must  shift  from  element  to  element,  and 
this  shifting  itself  involves  new  means  of 
pleasure-getting.  In  general,  therefore,  we 
may  say  that  the  conditions  of  pleasure  per- 
manence are  the  shifting  of  a  focus  in  con- 
sciousness over  a  wide  pleasure-field.  Let  us 
consider  each  of  these  divisions  more  fully  in 
reverse  order. 

Width  of  Field.  —  Pleasure  in  any  one 
direction  being  essentially  ephemeral,  the 
only  means  by  which  we  are  able  to  ensure 
permanence  of  pleasure  is  by  having  open 
before  us  wide  opportunities  to  change  the 
content  of  our  thought.  As  we  have  already 
seen,  it  is  first  of  all  essential  that  the  fulness 
of  our  complex  mental  states  should  be  non- 


174  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

painful;  it  then  becomes  important  to  see 
that  many  elements  of  the  complex  are 
capable  of  developing  pleasure.  This  is 
important  not  only  because  we  are  thus 
enabled  to  shift  the  focus  of  attention  with 
little  risk  of  painf  ulness,  but  especially  because 
a  multiplicity  of  simultaneous  effects  thus 
becomes  possible.  Lotze,  as  he  views  his 
consciousness,  tells  us  that  the  aesthetic  effect 
"  is  notably  (but  not  exclusively)  bound  to 
simultaneousness  and  multiplicity  of  impres- 
sion." It  is  thus  that  the  artist  groups 
together  as  large  a  number  of  means  of 
pleasurable  stimulation  as  he  can  combine 
without  conflict.  He  endeavours  to  use  at  the 
same  time  arts  of  ear  and  sight,  and  those 
which  depict  more  directly  the  activities  of 
men.  The  difficulty  of  such  wide  combina- 
tion, however,  is  very  great,  and  he  more  often 
deals  with  narrower  fields ;  but  always  does  he 
use  every  device  which  may  draw  into  the  field 
of  suggestion  all  associative  factors  which  are 
not  inharmonious,  and  which  may  add  some- 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  175 

thing  to  the  pleasures  given.  He  does  not 
disdain  any  element,  however  likely  to  pall, 
if  he  is  able  to  leave  our  thought  free  to  turn 
elsewhere  as  soon  as  the  pleasurable  effect  is 
gone.  The  suggestion  of  sense  pleasures  he 
uses,  but  avoids  the  actual  sense  stimulus 
under  conditions  that  may  lead  to  excess  or 
bring  painful  results  in  revival.  He  aims  to 
bring  into  play  the  imagination  which  carries 
one  on  from  height  to  height  in  pleasure- 
giving  flight.  It  is  this  direction  of  effort 
which  leads  Lessing  to  call  for  an  incomple- 
tion  of  detail  in  the  artist's  work,  that  the 
imagination  may  have  room  in  which  to  work 
its  expansive  effects.  We  look  thus  for  a 
fulness  of  non-fulfilment  of  exact  detail ;  for 
an  avoidance  of  strictness  of  realism — for 
type  portrayal.  The  artist,  moreover,  aims 
to  stir  up  those  vague  regions  of  pyschic  life, 
the  elements  of  which  we  can  scarcely  grasp, — 
the  regions  usually  termed  "  emotional."  He 
produces  in  his  observer  an  aesthetic  horizon 
which  Guyau  has  interpreted,  wrongly  I  think, 


176  ESTHETIC   PKINCIPLES. 

as  the  essential  characteristic  of  aesthetic 
pleasure  ;  that  "  irradiation  "  which  seems  to 
have  a  centre  in  some  sense  impression,  but 
which  works  effects  in  all  mental  regions 
connected  with  it,  effects  of  so  small  intensity, 
of  such  rapidly  shifting  content,  that  there  is 
little  of  it  but  the  vagueness  of  an  aurora. 
The  artist  cannot  undervalue  even  the  effects 
of  admiration  of  his  own  skill;  for  though 
the  pleasure  gained  thus  is  for  a  few,  and 
perhaps  only  for  his  fellow-workers,  for  them 
it  is  not  a  small  pleasure-giving  element,  and 
if  his  work  holds  the  admirer  by  this  means 
but  a  moment  longer,  so  much  the  more  is 
that  work  effective. 

Breadth  of  field  without  the  emphasis  of 
foci  implies  a  widely  divided  attention  which 
it  is  important  for  us  to  consider.  The 
recognition  of  the  existence  of  a  field  in 
the  percipient  lacking  in  definiteness  of  at- 
tention has,  indeed,  not  infrequently  led  to 
over-emphasis  of  the  receptive  state,  of  the 
passive  conditions,  for  art  effect;    too  little 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  177 

account  being  taken  of  the  reactive  elements 
involved.  These  latter,  however,  do,  in  fact, 
make  up  a  large  part  of  the  aesthetic  com- 
plex, as  our  later  aestheticians.  Sully,  Guyau, 
and  others,  do  not  fail  to  recognize  dis- 
tinctly. Guyau,  in  fact,  in  his  zeal  to 
force  the  recognition  of  his  view,  makes 
himself  appear,  some  will  doubtless  think,  to 
take  an  extreme  view  on  the  other  side, — 
to  over-emphasize  the  active  element. 

Any  work  of  art  which  tends  to  raise  a 
marked  attention  in  one  line  necessarily  ex- 
cludes pleasurable  psychoses  in  other  lines,  in 
that  it  lowers  the  effect  of  these  other  presen- 
tations or  revivals  as  components  of  conscious- 
ness at  the  time.  A  work  of  art,  in  which  the 
elements  are  so  balanced  that  the  observer  is 
kept  in  a  state  of  nicely  divided  and  still 
of  constantly  shifting  pleasurable  attention, 
will  produce  the  most  widespread,  the  most 
voluminous,  even  though  not  the  most  vivid, 
pleasure. 

The  power  of  music  is  often  clearly  aided 


178  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

by  its  indefiniteness,  its  "  dreaminess/'  as  we 
call  it;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  great 
strength  of  the  masters  of  music  has  lain  in 
their  ability  to  widen  the  field  of  pleasure 
by  the  means  under  consideration.  In  such 
a  complex  art  as  the  opera,  the  difficulty 
of  reaching  this  balance  is  very  great.  An 
operatic  composer  of  inferior  power  will  not 
be  able  to  prevent  a  frequent  diversion  of 
attention  with  consequent  loss  of  fulness. 
Now  one  finds  one's  self  watching  the  stage 
effects  to  the  exclusion  of  the  music,  and 
again  listening  to  the  music  with  closed  eyes, 
with  no  thought  of  the  action.  In  the  im- 
pression obtained  from  the  best  work,  some 
of  Wagner's,  for  instance,  I  find  myself,  on 
the  other  hand,  very  often  lost  in  the  totality. 
All  particulars  seem  to  be  forgotten  in  the 
general  effect ;  the  stage  actions  are  not  sep- 
arately emphatic ;  the  suggestion  to  note  dis- 
tinctly the  "motifs"  is  an  intrusion.  The 
crudeness  in  respect  to  finer  play  of  thought 
and  emotion,  which  the  plot  in  his  operas 


r 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  179 


shows,  is  probably  necessary  to  their  power. 
The  strong  development  of  "plot  interest" 
would  doubtless  act  as  a  detriment  to  the 
wide  totality. 

It  is,  perhaps,  in  part  the  unconscious  reo- 
ognition  of  this  principle  of  diffusion  of  atten- 
tion which  leads  to  the  popular  opinion  that 
the  critical  spirit  is  fatal  to  aesthetic  recep- 
tivity ;  and  in  one  sense  this  is  true,  although 
I  am  free  to  confess  to  the  belief  that  what 
is  lost  to  the  critic  in  width  of  field  by  the 
concentration  of  the  critical  view  is  largely 
gained  in  the  region  of  intellectual  play.  To 
the  critic  who  knows  his  subject  well  this 
actually  prevents  his  satiety,  overcomes  the 
danger  of  distaste  for  works  with  which  he 
must  be  over-familiar,  although,  perhaps, 
communication  of  his  thought  to  others  less 
well  equipped  may  in  some  cases  mar  their 
pleasure,  by  reducing  the  breadth  of  pleasure- 
field,  without  compensation  in  other  directions. 

But  width  of  field  has  its  dangers  too,  for 
it  makes  easy  the  shifting  of  one's  thought 


180  ESTHETIC    PRINCIPLES. 

upon  lines  of  pain-giving.  An  example  of 
this  has  already  been  given  in  another  con- 
nection, where  I  called  attention  to  the  fact 
that  the  tone  of  voice,  or  anything  which 
indicates  the  animus  of  the  describer  or 
critic,  will  frequently  change  an  aesthetic  into 
a  non-aesthetic  object  for  the  listener;  and 
vice  versct. 

The  aesthetic  state  of  mind,  although 
largely  a  matter  of  the  complex  summation 
of  vague  pleasures,  involves  more  than  this. 
To  perfection  of  art  there  must  exist  decided 
centres  of  interest,  flitting  more  or  less  lightly 
over  this  vaguer  field.  To  the  consideration 
of  this  point  we  now  turn. 

The  Shifting  Focus.  —  In  Amiel's  Journal, 
23d  May,  1863,  we  read :  "All  that  is  diffused 
and  indistinct,  without  form  or  sex  or  accent, 
is  antagonistic  to  beauty,  for  the  mind's  first 
need  is  light.  Light  means  order ;  and  order 
means,  in  the  first  place,  the  distinction  of 
the  parts,  in  the  second,  their  regular  action. 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  181 

Beauty  is  based  on  reason."  Although  we 
have  seen  that  exclusively  rationalistic  views 
of  aesthetics  are  not  tenable,  we  cannot  help 
agreeing  that  an  object  which  presents  no 
virile  interests,  but  merely  a  field  of  moderate 
pleasures,  soon  cloys.  It  becomes  "sweet," 
as  they  say  in  the  studio.  It  was  probably 
the  recognition  of  this  fact  that  led  Lotze 
to  the  theory  that  beauty  requires  the  grasp 
of  the  ideal  through  some  definite  object,  and 
Volkmann  to  separate  the  art  field  from 
the  field  of  aesthetics,  on  the  ground  that 
the  former  strikes  a  definite  chord  above  the 
merely  hedonic  field  of  assthetics.  For  Volk- 
mann this  definiteness,  which  most  emphati- 
cally takes  its  object  out  of  its  environment, 
is  the  direction  in  which  the  art  of  the 
ancients  showed  its  highest  superiority. 

But  if  art  work  must  impress  us  by  its 
force  of  attention,  its  centres  of  interest,  these 
points  of  intenser  activity  are  points  of 
danger ;  all  pleasures  are  ephemeral,  the  more 
so  as  they  gain  in  vividness,  and  the  shifting 


182  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

of  these  centres  of  interest  is  of  as  great 
importance  as  their  existence.  I  think  we 
shall  find  this  recognized  in  certain  general 
principles. 

First,  we  may  expect  to  find  means  adopted 
to  retain  pleasure  in  one  special  direction  by 
arranging  to  shift  attention  away  from  the 
special  field  before  us  before  pain  or  complete 
indifference  occurs,  and  back  again  at  the 
moment  when  pleasurable  recurrence  of  the 
content  is  again  possible.  This  brings  before 
us  the  great  principle  of  rhythm. 

Because  processes  of  nutrition  are  rela- 
tively regular,  the  times  required  for  complete 
recovery  after  full  use  remain  approximately 
equal  in  the  same  set  of  organs,  and  it  thus 
happens  that  we  learn  to  act  at  recurrent 
regular  intervals,  being  thus  enabled  to  hold 
to  a  special  subject-matter  for  a  long  time, 
not  only  without  fatigue,  but,  if  the  rhythm 
be  properly  timed,  with  marked  pleasure. 

Accurate  rhythms  are  most  notable  in  music 
and  poetry,  but  what  may  be  termed  inaccu- 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  183 

rate  rliythms  are  the  very  ordinary  tools  of 
the  artist  in  other  lines  also.  The  power  of 
order,  in  architecture,  for  example,  and  the 
value  of  symmetries  generally,  depend  largely 
upon  such  rhythms.  Instances  will  be  re- 
called by  the  reader  in  all  the  arts  without 
special  example. 

Passing  to  the  consideration  of  the  shifting 
of  attention  beyond  the  same  field,  from  field 
to  field,  we  obtain  the  well-recognized  canon 
of  variety.  Monotony  of  stimulations  gives 
us  first  indifference  and  then  the  positive 
pains  of  fatigue.  If  the  elements  of  con- 
sciousness be  constantly  changed,  however, 
the  chances  of.  pleasure  gain  are  greatly  in- 
creased; if  a  unity  be  recognized  in  the 
variety,  on  the  principles  already  discussed, 
we  have  an  added  pleasure  to  that  gained  by 
the  shifting  of  the  centre  of  interest. 

Variety,  however,  like  all  the  means  of 
pleasure  stimulation,  is  likely  to  be  carried 
too  far.  Variety  of  pleasurable  stimulation  is 
exhaustive  and  will  eventually  aggravate  the 


184  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

trouble  we  attempt  to  correct,  by  making  pain- 
ful every  activity  in  our  field.  An  example 
of  this  we  may  all  recall  in  the  craving  for 
total  rest  experienced  after  a  visit  to  some 
great  exhibition  where  competitors  vie  with 
each  other  to  attract  attention  to  their  wares 
by  varied  devices  looking  to  pleasure-giving. 
We  often  find  people  remarking  that  they 
enjoy  an  art  work  (especially  is  this  true  in 
architectural  criticism)  because  it  is  simple. 
The  distracting  elements  in  the  varied  objects 
which  they  have  examined  in  the  hope  of 
gaining  pleasurable  effects  have  disappeared, 
and  have  left  a  quiet  delight  not  far  removed 
from  the  so-called  "  pleasures  of  rest." 

Contrasts^  already  discussed,  also  gain  their 
effects  through  change  of  region  of  stimula- 
tion. Where  notable,  however,  they  depend 
upon  vividness  (hypernormality  of  action)  for 
their  results,  and  must  be  used  with  care  lest 
they  act  exhaustively. 

The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  those  vivid 
elements  of  novelty  which  give  the  value  to 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  185 

what  we  call  the  picturesque.  We  cannot  use 
these  means  to  gam  aesthetic  result  unless  we 
are  able  to  turn  ourselves  away  from  their 
stimulation  as  soon  as  we  begin  to  be  weary. 
Hence,  we  should  avoid  the  use  of  the  pictur- 
esque in  our  homes,  and  should  deal  most 
carefully  with  strong  contrasts  in  the  decora- 
tion of  rooms  in  which  we  wish  to  live,  or  in 
buildings  which  one  is  compelled  to  view 
constantly. 

On  the  whole,  it  appears  that  the  safest 
means  of  producing  lasting  aesthetic  results 
will  be  reached  if  we  choose  that  succession  of 
elements,  each  of  which  is  naturally  led  up  to 
by  those  which  have  preceded :  or  to  put  this 
in  physiological  language ;  we  will  gain  our 
result  best  if  we  choose  such  successive  impres- 
sions as  will  stimulate  organs  that  have  been 
best  and  fully  prepared  for  action  by  the  asso- 
ciative nutrition  (if  I  may  so  speak)  connected 
with  the  previously  stimulated  activities. 

From  this  we  may  argue  to  a  wide  aesthetic 
law,  which  may  perhaps  be  called  the  prind- 


186  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

pie  of  the  satisfaction  of  expectancies  —  a  legit- 
imate description  of  the  means  of  gaining 
aesthetic  result  here  touched  upon,  as  all  such 
movements  of  thought  appear  in  retrospect  to 
be  expectation  phases  which  are  fulfilled. 
That  this  canon,  however,  although  of  wide 
application,  is  not  a  universal  one  for  aesthet- 
ics is  apparent  when  we  consider  that  our 
normal,  indifferent,  scarcely  conscious  life  is 
largely  made  up  of  these  fulfilments  of  expec- 
tation, although  not  recognized  as  such,  to 
be  sure,  unless  their  legitimacy  is  questioned 
in  one  way  or  another. 

In  general,  then,  it  appears  that  the  great 
artist  is  one  who  is  able  to  make  use  of  the 
principles  above  enumerated.  Having  avoided 
pains,  having  created  his  wide  field  of  non- 
pain,  he  produces  a  wide  summation  of  pleas- 
urable elements.  Further,  he  so  arranges  the 
shifting  of  attention  that  as  one  impression 
fails  in  pleasure-giving,  another  equally  enjoy- 
able appears,  through  natural  connection,  to 


POSITIVE   PEINCIPLES.  187 

supply  the  place  of  that  pleasure  which  is 
fading  away.  Moreover,  by  compelling  a  judi- 
cious recurrence  of  special  interests,  he  marks 
a  unity  of  the  manifold,  which  unity  gives  to 
his  work  a  distinctive  character. 

I  have  already  named  the  great  works  of 
Wagner  in  illustration  of  the  poise  of  atten- 
tion; but  Wagner's  power  goes  beyond  this: 
wherever  we  break  away  from  width  of  effect 
and  allow  our  attention  to  concentrate  itself 
upon  details,  we  there  find  a  gem  of  melody, 
a  delicious  progression,  a  richness  of  harmony, 
or  a  masterful  bit  of  orchestration ;  and  if  we 
turn  from  the  music  we  are  still  thrilled  with 
emotion  or  impressed  by  some  profundity  of 
thought.  But  withal,  these  details  are  not 
allowed  to  efface  the  value  of  the  special 
marked  development  of  the  work.  Shake- 
speare's wonderful  drama,  to  take  another 
example,  shows  us  great  width  of  interest, 
yet  always  some  figures  of  special  interest, 
from  one  to  the  other  of  which  our  atten- 
tion is  artfully  shifted  without  loss  of  that 


188  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

background  of  delight  which  is  felt  apart  from 
the  specially  forceful  impressions.  His  genius 
manifests  itself  further  in  the  ability  to  pre- 
serve a  proper  balance,  so  that  using  wealth 
of  subordinate  elements,  no  one  of  them  is 
allowed  to  rise  to  sufficiently  great  importance 
to  mar  the  general  movement  of  the  drama, 
or  to  detract  from  the  importance  of  the  char- 
acter whose  action  is  to  thrill  our  souls.  The 
great  painter  treats  his  subject  in  like  man- 
ner; he  gives  us  a  wide,  vague,  pleasurable 
background  in  impression  or  associative  revi- 
val trains ;  a  wide  field  of  more  marked  pleas- 
ures over  which  the  centre  of  interest  shifts, 
without  loss  of  the  prominence  of  the  central 
"  motif  "  to  which  especially  he  would  compel 
our  recurrence. 

It  must  be  apparent  to  my  reader  that  if 
capacity  to  produce  relative  permanency  of 
pleasure  be  determined  by  this  shifting  of 
points  of  interest  over  wide  fields  of  moderate 
pleasure,  then  the  arts  involving  the  stimula- 
tion of  successive  mental  states  have  a  great 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  189 

advantage  over  those  which  are  dependent 
upon  simple  unchanging  impression ;  and  on 
that  account,  in  my  view,  the  arts  of  literature 
and  of  music,  and  of  combinations  of  the  two, 
must  be  held  to  be  the  arts  of  pre-eminent  im- 
portance to-day,  and  the  ones  that  are  likely 
to  become  more  and  more  influential  as  civil- 
ization advances. 

In  bringing  to  an  end  this  chapter  and  this 
book  I  wish  to  note  a  few  points  concerning 
the  subjects  discussed  in  what  has  preceded 
this.  In  the  first  and  second  chapters  we 
studied  the  nature  of  the  aesthetic  effect  in 
tjie  observer  ;  in  the  third  chapter  we  studied 
the  nature  of  the  impulse  that  compels  the 
artist  to  undertake  his  work;  and  in  the 
fourth  chapter  we  considered  the  nature  of 
the  critical  act  and  of  the  standards  used 
when  we  assume  the  critical  attitude. 

The  negative  and  positive  principles  that  we 
have  just  been  considering  have  very  different 
worth  for  us  as  artists  and  as  observers. 


190  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

As  artists  the  negative  principles,  and  all 
the  investigations  in  reference  to  aesthetic 
problems  that  science  can  make  for  us,  must 
be  of  great  value  as  warnings  which  will  help 
us  to  avoid  the  failures  experienced  by  those 
who  have  preceded  us  in  the  search  for 
beauty.  The  experience  of  our  race  in  the 
past  has  left  record  of  its  failures  in  certain 
general  negative  principles  to  which  we  can- 
not but  listen;  and  science  we  may  hope, 
teaching  us  by  more  accurate  method,  will  in 
the  future  guide  the  artist  with  a  surer  hand 
to  avoid  the  pitfalls  into  which  his  blind 
enthusiasm  is  liable  to  lead  him. 

The  positive  principles  aid  the  artist  much 
less  definitely,  for,  as  we  have  seen,  he  must 
depend  upon  the  individual  force  of  the  racial 
instinct  within  him  that  guides  his  artistic 
expression;  so  that  in  practice  even  these 
positive  principles  which  we  have  enumerated 
must  come  to  be  used  by  him  negatively  as 
safeguards  against  excesses. 

When   we  become   observers    and   critics. 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  191 

however,  we  find  that  the  positive  and  nega- 
tive principles  are  more  equal  in  value  for 
us ;  and  I  wish  now  to  ask  my  reader  in 
closing  to  take  up  with  me  the  consideration 
of  a  practical  problem  in  criticism  which  will 
illustrate  the  relative  value  of  these  positive 
and  negative  aesthetic  principles,  and  which 
will  indicate  the  complication  of  the  subjects 
with  which  a  philosophic  aesthetic  has  to  deal. 
I  choose  for  this  purpose  the  much-discussed 
question  as  to  the  values  of  structural  form  in 
architecture. 

The  study  of  the  development  of  aesthetics 
teaches  us  that  architecture  as  a  fine  art  has 
arisen  in  the  past  by  the  studied  attempt  to 
attach  aesthetic  qualities  to  certain  settled  and 
well -understood  constructional  forms :  but 
for  the  discovery  of,  and  the  perfecting  of, 
the  constructional  methods  involved  there 
could  be  no  architecture.  But  the  mere  con- 
sideration of  these  methods  has  not  made 
architecture  a  fine  art  until  the  race  has 
learned  to  use  these  constructional  tools  in 


192  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

ways  that  produce  within  us  a  sense  of 
beauty. 

Now  what  has  in  the  past  been  a  matter  of 
almost  spontaneous  and  thoroughly  racial  de- 
velopment we  are  attempting  to  make  indi- 
vidual and  that  by  rational  means.     We  are 

.    * 
attempting  to  do  in  our  lives  by  forethought 

what  in  the  past  has  been  worked  out  by  slow 
processes  of  racial  effort  and  by  the  elimina- 
tion of  the  inferior  in  racial  product. 

It  is  clear  that  we  should  learn  from  the 
history  of  the  subject  that  structure  is  of  the 
essence  of  architecture;  that  building  methods 
are  the  tools  of  the  artist  in  this  direction; 
that  if  he  do  not  use  structure  as  his  tool  the 
artist  is  no  architect,  although  perhaps  in 
some  other  way  he  may  illumine  the  field  of 
art ;  e.g.,  as  a  decorator. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  must  never  be 
forgotten  that  this  structure  is  merely  his  tool, 
and  that  the  end  to  be  attained  by  the  archi- 
tect as  well  as  by  any  artist  is  the  production 
of  beauty  of  a  special  type. 


^      POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  193 

Now  we  find  men  crying  out  that  emphasis 
of  structure  is  all  important,  and  they  point 
to  the  virile  Gothic  of  France  and  try  to  make 
it  teach  us  that  we  should  treat  architecture 
as  the  decoration  of  a  skeleton  in  which  bone 
and  sinew  should  always  be  prominent ;  and 
on  the  other  hand,  we  find  others  who,  re- 
pelled by  such  views,  point  to  the  glories  of 
the  palaces  of  Venice  and  of  the  loggias  of 
Florence,  and  tell  us  that  structural  power 
has  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  architectural 
values. 

But  I  think  we  may  find  the  truth  in  a 
combination  of  these  two  opposing  views  if 
we  bear  in  mind  what  has  been  said  above,  — 
that  structure  is  the  tool  of  the  architect-artist 
and  that  the  production  of  beauty  is  his  goal. 
He  must  learn,  as  his  racial  prototypes  have 
done,  to  know  thoroughly  the  settled  prin- 
ciples of  construction,  so  that  he  may  be  able 
to  think  in  structural  forms;  so  that  the 
arches,  the  roofs,  etc.,  that  he  sketches  may 
be  constructed  practically  as  he  sketches  them. 


194  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

For  the  most  part,  the  use  of  these  struct- 
ural tools  involves  negative  aesthetic  principles 
only.  It  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  negative  prin- 
ciple of  the  greatest  moment  that  the  artist 
should  avoid  shocks,  and  surely  if  in  his 
design  the  architect  bring  into  prominence 
the  perception  of  any  active  constructional 
force  he  ought  also  to  leave  unmasked  the 
counter  force  that  holds  the  former  in  equi- 
librium ;  otherwise  he  will  leave  with  us  a 
sense  of  unrest  that  is  distinctly  subversive  of 
aesthetic  effect. 

From  a  positive  aesthetic  standpoint  there 
is  this  to  note,  that  for  the  average  highly 
cultivated  man  it  is  a  distinct  gain  to  bring 
out  clearly  the  constructional  conception,  pro- 
vided this  can  be  done  without  destroying 
other  beauty  of  a  higher  order ;  but  the  pro- 
duction of  this  beauty  is  the  architect's  goal, 
and  he  surely  will  show  himself  a  mere  builder 
and  no  artist  if  in  his  emphasis  of  the 
structure  he  lose  higher  aesthetic  qualities. 
If,  however,  he  be  a  master  and  be  able  to 


POSITIVE   PRINCIPLES.  195 

mark  the  structural  elements  without  loss,  or 
even  with  gain,  to  the  beauty  of  the  whole,  he 
will  add  a  new  source'  of  delight  to  his  work 
which  will  be  of  great  value. 

Now  to  turn  to  an  opposite  effect,  namely, 
the  use  of  structural  forms  as  mere  decorative 
features ;  such  work  as  we  find  in  all  modem 
Renaissance  architecture  which  gains  its  in- 
spiration, in  this  respect,  from  the  Romans, 
who  called  in  the  Greeks  to  face  their  con- 
structional skeletons  with  Greek-like  decora- 
tive architectural  robes. 

If  this  use  of  structural  forms  of  the  past 
involves  recognizable  pretence  of  structural 
use,  where  such  use  does  not  exist,  there  rings 
out  a  false  note  in  the  scheme;  there  is  a 
violation  of  our  negative  canon  which  tells 
us  to  avoid  untruth,  because  untruth  gives  a 
shock  which  is  fatal  to  beauty.  But  on  the 
other  hand,  if  those  forms  of  structural 
decoration  make  no  pretence  to  hav^  struct- 
ural values,  and  are  in  themselves  beautiful 
(as,  by  the  way,  many  of  the  modern  Renais- 


196  ESTHETIC   PKIITCIPLES. 

sance  details  are  not),  and  if  by  their  use  the 
proportions  or  colour  masses  of  the  building 
may  be  brought  into  more  harmonious  relation 
than  were  otherwise  possible,  or  if  in  other 
respects  the  building  be  thereby  beautified,  I 
can  see  no  critical  objection  whatever  to  their 
use.  The  most  that  can  be  said  against  such 
ornament  is  that  in  its  use  we  confess  our 
lack  of  vigorous,  true,  architectural  genius; 
and  that  such  use  tends  to  make  us  decorators 
and  not  architects,  and  leads  to  a  loss  of  deep 
architectural  conviction. 

Speaking  negatively  again,  the  architect 
,  should  use  his  structural  tools  economically, 
so  that  we  may  not  be  oppressed  by  any 
valueless  expenditure  of  human  time  and 
effort ;  but  on  the  other  hand  positively,  it  is 
perfectly  valid  for  him  to  use  unne^ieted  flesh 
(so  to  speak)  to  cover  his  structural  skeleton, 
where  it  is  plain  and  evident  that  the  super- 
fluous material  and  labour  is  employed  for  the 
legitimate  special  purpose  of  adding  to  the 
aesthetic  effectiveness  of  the  whole. 


POSITIVE    PRINCIPLES.  197 

Thus  while  the  architect  must  use  his  tools 
rationally  to  avoid  offence,  and  if  he  be  a 
genius  may  be  able  to  use  these  very  tools  as 
effective  aesthetic  instruments,  he  must  never 
forget  that  the  end  in  view  is  the  attainment 
of  beauty. 

And  here  we  have  an  interesting  example  of 
one  of  the  main  principles  I  above  defend.  As 
I  have  said  before,  we  cast  out  beyond  the 
boundaries  of  the  aesthetic  all  that  pains,  but 
we  do  not  necessarily  call  a  total  work  unaes- 
thetic  because  it  contains  painful  elements, 
provided  it  also  contains  sufficient  of  beauty 
to  overwhelm  with  satisfactions  the  minor 
discords. 

So  one  who  has  become  steeped  with  the 
beauty  of  the  masterpieces  of  French  Gothic, 
with  their  emphasis  of  structural  elements, 
must  often  experience  a  sense  of  loss  when  he 
views  the  works  of  the  early  Tuscan  masters ; 
but  notwithstanding  the  minor  discords  in  this 
work  produced  by  structural  ineffectiveness, 
the  superabundant  beauty  of  proportion  and 


198  ESTHETIC   PRINCIPLES. 

detail  and  colour  compel  within  him  a  deep 
satisfaction  that  the  sombre  might  of  Amiens 
or  Beauvais  cannot  produce.  And  then  turn 
to  the  glory  of  the  best  Greek  work  where 
this  constructional  discord  is  lacking ;  where 
the  structure  indeed  tells  its  historic  story  and 
unostentatiously  speaks  of  its  strength ;  and 
where  withal,  above  all,  stands  emphatic  that 
sense  of  perfected  beauty  of  line  and  propor- 
tioned colour  mass  which  leads  us  to  bow 
before  the  masters  who  thus  surpassed  us. 
There  we  have  true  architectural  beauty  of 
the  highest  type. 


THE  END. 


INDEX. 


Absolutes  in  -ffilsthetics,  9. 
Active  pleasures,  19. 
JEsthietic  defined,  1,  4. 
-^Esthetic    field   of    cultivated 

man,  93. 
JEsthetic  impression,  31. 
Esthetic  judgment,  31. 
Esthetic  "  ought,"  92. 
Esthetic  responsibility,  91. 
Esthetic  separated  from  He- 

donic,  16. 
JEsthetic  standards,  Ch.  IV. 
Algedonic,  112. 
Algedonic  .^thetics,  Chs.  V. 

and  VI. 
Alison,  13. 
Allen,  Grant,  12. 
Amiel,  180. 

Architectural  structure,  191  fl. 
Aristotle,  3,  9,  16,  147. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  48. 
Art  as  racial  product,  192  f. 
Art  defined,  4. 
Art  Instinct,  52  ;  disinterested, 

67  ;  common  to  all  men,  69. 
Artist  and  Critic,  73  f. 
Artist  defined,  4. 
Artist's  standpoint,  Ch.  III.,  5. 
Arts,  future  development  of, 

188. 
Avoidance  of  Ugly,  147. 


Baldwin,  62. 
Baumgarten,  1,  12. 
Beautiful,  the,  114. 
Beauty,  2  ;  conception  varies, 

44  ff. 
Benevolent  Instincts,  62. 
Bergmann,  10. 
Bosanquet,  3. 
Burke,  13. 

Contrast,  160,  184. 
Cravings,  121. 
Critic  and  Artist,  105. 
Critic's  standpoint,  Ch.  IV. 

Darwin,  49. 
DeGu6rin,  Maurice,  48. 

Elimination  of  Ugly,  118. 
Emerson,  48,  139. 
Emotional  pleasure,  19. 
Emotions,  58  fi. 
Emotions     as     determining 

Beauty,  13. 
Emotions  defined,  35. 
Epicureanism,  15,  100. 

Fechner,  16,  95, 170. 
Foci,  180. 
Function  of  Art,  82. 


199 


200 


INDEX. 


Genius,  53. 

Grace,  140. 

Growth,  143. 

Guyau,  13,  82,  175, 177. 

Habit,  90, 

Harmony,  137,  170. 
Hume,  15. 

Ideal  aesthetic  field,  96, 

Idealistic  conceptions,  9. 

Imagination,  20, 

Imitation,  3,  60,  135. 

Immediacy,  20. 

Individual  standard  of  moment, 

86. 
"Instinct  feelings,"  56  fl. 
Intellect  as  determining  beauty, 

13, 
Intellectual  pleasure,  19. 
Irradiation,  176. 

Kant,  19,  64. 

Lipps,  19, 

Lotze,  10,  19,  174, 181. 
"Lower  pleasures,"  32. 
"  Lower  sensations,"  60. 
Ludicrous,  2,  163. 

Mill,  James,  13. 
Moral  tjrpes,  19, 
Music,  132, 
Musical  programmes,  27. 

Negative    principles,    118   fi., 
135. 


Objective  qualities,  search  for, 

8. 
Observer's  standpoint,  Ch,  I, 
"  Ought "  in  Esthetics,  92, 

Pains  of  excess,  exclusion  of, 
145, 

Pains  of  repression,  exclusion 
of,  119, 

Permanence  of  pleasure,  22  fi., 
30. 

Picturesque,  185. 

Plato,  9, 

Play  Instinct,  64, 

Pleasure  as  determining  beauty, 
15. 

Pleasure  as  subjective  quality, 
14, 

Pleasure  and  Pain,  general 
qualities,  39,  43 ;  not  emo- 
tions, 36 ;  not  fimdamental 
elements,  38  ;  not  sensations, 
36 ;  not  sui  generis^  38 ;  of 
action,  40 ;  of  cessation  of 
action,  40 ;  relation  to  or- 
ganic action  and  nutrition, 
41. 

Plot  interest,  179, 

Positive  Esthetic  Principles, 
156, 

Puns,  167. 

Purist's  standpoint,  134. 

Puvis  de  Chavannes,  54. 

Relatively     stable     individual 

standpoint,  88. 
Repose,  142. 
Rhythm,  182. 


INDEX. 


201 


Rosenkranz,  127. 
Royce,  95. 

Satisfaction  of  expectancies, 
186. 

Schiller,  64,  126,  128,  141. 

Schlegel,  127. 

Science  of  Esthetics,  147. 

"  Self  exhibiting  reactions," 
62. 

Sensational  pleasure  not  ex- 
cluded from  .^thetic,  19. 

Sensations  as  determining 
Beauty,  12. 

Sensations  defined,  35. 

Shakespeare,  102. 

Shifting  Focus,  180, 

Shocks,  128. 

Skill,  176. 

Social  Consolidation  as  func- 
tion of  Art,  82. 

Spencer,  25,  64,  139,  140. 

Spiritual  Types,  19. 

Standards,  Ch.  IV.  ;  develop- 
ment of,  102 ;  relativity  of, 
98. 

Stoics,  64. 

Structure  in  Architecture,  191 
fl. 


Style,  140. 

Subjective  qualities,  search  for, 

12,  14. 
Sublime,  2. 
Sully,  171,  177. 
Summation,  23,  43. 

Taine,  95. 

Tools  of  Artist,  77. 

Truth,  141. 

Type  portrayal,  137. 

Ugly,  The,  114. 
Unfitness,  137. 
Unities,  The,  144. 
Unity  of  Manifold,  170. 
Universals  in  Esthetics,  9. 
Usefulness,  137,  138  ff. 

Variety,  183. 
Vividness,  169. 
Volkmann,  181. 
Von  Hartmann,  15. 

Wagner,  102,  178,  187. 
Width  of  Field,  173. 
Width  of  impression,  20. 
Wit,  163,  166. 
Wundt,  94. 


Pain,  Pleasure,  and  /Csthetics. 


HENRY  RUTGERS  MARSHALL. 


Cloth.    8vo.    83.00. 


FROM  THE  COMMENTS  OF  THE  PRESS. 

"  The  chapters  on  aesthetics  and  the  author's  views  are  interesting,  but 
lack  of  space  forbids  their  being  fully  noticed  here.  It  is  a  thoroughly  sci- 
entific psychological  work,  that  as  alienists,  and  therefore  psychologists, 
our  readers  may  profitably  study."  —  American  Journal  of  Insanity. 

"  Mr.  Marshall  has  long  been  known  as  an  original  thinker  in  the  field 
which  he  has  chosen  for  interpretation ;  so  that  this  volume  which  he 
now  presents,  and  which  has  been  looked  for  for  some  time,  deserves 
the  best  attention,  not  alone  of  Simon-pure  psychologists,  but  of  physi- 
cians, and  especially  neurologists."  —  Journal  0/  Nervous  and  Mental 
Disease. 

"  There  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  acuteness,  the  research,  and  the 
philosophical  grasp  of  this  writer:  No  subsequent  worker  in  this  field 
can  afford  to  disregard  what  has  been  brought  out  in  this  book ;  and 
even  if  some  of  the  author's  views  shall  be  shown  to  require  modifica- 
tion, his  treatise  will  remain  an  admirable  example  of  what  a  scientific 
work  should  be."  —  TAe  Independent. 

"  It  may  well  be  said  that  Mr.  Marshall's  essay  is  the  most  successful 
of  all  yet  published  attempts  to  conceive  our  pleasures  and  displeasures 
under  something  like  a  single  point  of  view.  . .  .  No  previous  writer  has 
given  a  general  formula  which  covers  anything  like  the  same  amount  of 
ground.  Acquaintance  with  Mr.  Marshall's  work  will  be  indispensable 
to  every  future  student  of  the  subject.  His  own  learning  is  admirably 
complete ;  we  cannot  name  any  modern  author  of  consequence  of  whose 
writings  he  has  not  taken  account.  The  modesty  of  his  tone  is  also 
remarkable,  considering  that  his  mental  temperament  is  '  radical,"  and 
that  he  is  fighting  for  a  creation  of  his  own.  Apart  from  its  special  topic, 
too,  the  book  is  full  of  shrewd  and  original  psychology.  All  these  quali- 
ties render  it  almost  'epoch-making'  in  the  present  situation  of  sci- 
ence." —  Prof.  William  James,  in  TAe  Nation. 


MACMILLAN   &   CO., 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,   NEW  YORK. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara  College  Library 
Santa  Barbara,  California 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
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